Re: Re (2): silo
On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 02:06:58PM -0400, satadru@umich.edu wrote:
> Having booted linux in the past from Open Firmware (the kernel off of a
> floppy disk, and that on a mac with buggy Open Firmware that was configured
> to HIDE open firmware during the entire boot process) I think that it
> should be possible to have a kernel sit on a UFS filesystem, and then have
> open firmware load the kernel from a UFS filesystem, no?
The mac boot process loads a second stage loader from an HFS partition,
which then loads the kernel. It's no different than silo.
> While I can't see much use for this, I guess there are some underlying
> questions that might be valid.
>
> 1) why do we need to load a bootloader from open firmware? Is this just
> some program that lets us load a kernel from a non-UFS partition?
It lets you boot from raid partitions (ufs or not, this isn't possible
from openboot).
Also, it lets you select, interactively, from different kernels that may
be on the filesystem (isofs, ufs, ext2/ext3, etc...).
> 2) Can we set boot parameters in Open Firmware? That would be "nice",
> since sparc machines do let you set options in the OF nvram.
Of course if you had read the silo documentation, you would know this is
possible.
> Let me point out that I know very little about the actual boot process, and
> the handing off of open firmware to the actual kernel/ multilevel boot
> loaders that sparc linux may be using.
>
> But I do find the questions intriguing - why devote energy to a separate
> sparc boot loader when a fairly large company is already spending
> considerable effort on a bios configuration and boot loader environment.
I find it very intriguing that you would ask questions about something
before reading one single document about that which you are asking. Go
read the OpenBoot docs on docs.sun.com. Go read the SILO source and/or
docs. You will likely answer most of your questions yourself instead of
wasting others time just to satisfy your own curiosity.
--
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Deqo - http://www.deqo.com/
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