Re: GRUB2 Sparc

[Bart Grantham]

Vincent Pelletier wrote:

> Current status (on CVS) :
> Grub 2 boots to rescue mode, ls is buggy.
> Only tested in netboot environment (my U10 can boot grubof
> straightforward, it's an ELF64 file).
>
> Current status (on my disk) :
> Grub 2 has module support, ls is still buggy, I tested some modules and
> they work - loaded from disk. It still can't boot anything.
...
> I'm sorry not to have synced the cvs to my current progress on the port,


No problem at all.  I'm still not sure if I'll have time to really get 
into this long-term, myself.

Thanks for the heads up on the current status.  I've downloaded the code 
and have been looking through it.  Turns out that the installation of 
gcc that I have on my Ultra5 (gentoo stage 3) doesn't support 64bit 
binaries, so I think I'll have to rebuild gcc to really get underway. 
In the meantime I have a number of questions if you have any time to 
answer them, that would be very helpful.

- It looks like the Sparc port piggybacks on the powerpc port a bit for 
the open firmware bits.  Is that correct, or am I missing something?  If 
so, I suppose a good goal would be to try to move any OF-specific code 
into it's own module?

- My (admittedly somewhat hazy) understanding of how an Ultrasparc 
machine boots from disk (any IEEE1275 machine?) is that it reads the 
first sector on the given partition as OF bytecode, which then loads up 
a secondary bootloader or kernel.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on 
this.  Is the GRUB2 project intended to provide a standard bytecode 
sector for this as well, or will platform specific bootsector code 
continue to be used?  And if it's the latter, how does the team envision 
the interface between the boot loader and GRUB2 working?  Will something 
like SILO load up GRUB2 like it currently does the linux kernel and then 
GRUB2 takes over from there, leveraging OF for keyboard, mouse, display 
drivers?

I apologize for the list-wide reply, but I figured that if Vincent is 
unavailable, perhaps someone else could help me.  Thanks for any 
filling-in (or corrections :) ) that anyone can provide.

Bart