Subject: Re: Prep bootloader
To: Tim Rightnour <root@garbled.net>
From: Matt Thomas <matt@3am-software.com>
List: port-prep
Date: 03/08/2006 09:22:31
On Mar 8, 2006, at 8:31 AM, Tim Rightnour wrote:
>
> On 08-Mar-2006 Jochen Kunz wrote:
>>> We can essentially ship a script which will generate a
>>> bootimage from /netbsd, and write it out to the root drive.
>> What about a bootloader that reads /netbsd out of the root file
>> system?
>> This would avoid the partition table fsck entirely.
>
> The answer is mildy annoying. You can write a second stage
> bootloader for
> prep, theoretically at least, but the only way to get the firmware
> to load it,
> is still to have the magical boot partition. So while we can write a
> bootloader that will read netbsd off the disk, we will still have
> to go through
> partition table gyrations in order to boot. Given that.. I'm not
> sure it's
> worth anyone's time to write one, and I'm not really sure what the
> benefit
> would be.
After the install, it would be static. you could replace the kernel
in /
and get a new kernel. It would also make prep act most other ports.