Re: Initrd support & ext2fs bugfix

[Johan Rydberg]

Jeroen Dekkers <address@hidden> wrote:

: I think the only thing which should be easily sharable is the
: yet-to-be-created architecture indepedent Multiboot specification.
: But I don't have any knowledge nor experience with non-x86 hardware
: so I don't really know what's needed for that.

There may be sharable code for a generic ELF loader, aswell.  Some
operating system kernels are simply a ELF image that is loaded into
memory at its linking address and started by leaving control to
the entry address, providing usual startup information defined by 
the ABI.

I'm not sure how must code could be shared for a BSD loader, since
I have no real experience with any of the BSD flavors.
 
Regarding the arch-indep Multiboot standard.  There was some talk about
it on the mailing, IIRC (or was it on the grub-list?)  It was suggested
to use some form of tag-system to provide information.  Using that,
it is possible to add new tags when go along and port PUPA to new 
architectures -- as long as you update the multiboot standard.  Some
of the tags can be required for all architetures, other optional. It 
does  not have to be that complex, really.  IA-32 is probably the 
architecture with most boot problems.  

-- 
Johan Rydberg, Free Software Developer, Sweden
http://rtmk.sf.net | http://www.nongnu.org/guss/

Playing Gecco - Monady Drum'n'Bass