Re: OpenBSD on the Zaurus

This looks very interesting to me for many reasons, but even more
interesting still is the notion of having a true boot loader like grub or
lilo and being able to use it on the zaurus to boot into either OZ or OBSD.

I do this routinely with desktops and laptops, but is this feasible with the
zaurus?  If not, what would be required to make it feasible?

I just read the-altboot-faq and noticed that altboot apparently cannot act
as a true boot loader as do grub and lilo, but the justification didn't seem
quite correct to me:

=======
Can I dual-boot between Cacko / $Some-other-distribution and OZ?

Please keep in mind that while altboot does enable you to use multiple root
partitions / installations it does (currently) not allow you to boot another
kernel. To load a different kernel than the one flashed, the kexec tools are
required. Currently this is only possible with kernel 2.6 so your device
must support this kernel.

Also, since I am coding altboot on an Akita / SL-C1000 (on which kernel 2.6
makes the flash unreadable for kernel 2.4 without reflashing - nope I am not
kidding) kexec has not been implemented in altboot, yet. That shouldn’t be
too difficult tho.

=======

So the kexec tools might allow booting a different kernel... ok.  Is it
still true that kexec has not been implemented in altboot?  The 'yet' in the
FAQ sort-of begs the question, but my apologies if I shouldn't ask.  The
last thread on this subject in the list archive is a few months old:
"altboot and /dev/hdaX (spitz)", so I just wanted to check the latest
status.  I did learn some important details from that thread, though, that
seem to imply some important differences between the various zaurii
regarding this question, in particular, the microdrive zaurii (like my 3200)
don't store the kernel in flash, but rather, on /dev/hda1.  Did I understand
that correctly?  If so, then it seems that's a step in the right direction
towards implementing a true boot loader that allows one to boot up any
kernel and have it use any partition as the root filesystem.

==============
But why is booting another kernel such a big deal for dual-boot?

Because each and every distribution out there requires you to run the exact
same kernel, including commandline options, configuration and exact same
version as the kernel it was shipped with. You simply can’t run a kernel 2.4
based OS with a kernel 2.6 and vice-versa.

<...>
==============

While it may be mostly or totally true that one can't run a 2.4 kernel with
a root filesystem and libraries and utilities that were meant to be run with
a 2.6 kernel (or vice versa), it is most definitely *not* true that each and
every distribution requires one to run the exact same kernel as it was
shipped with.  I have first-hand experience to the contrary with Debian,
Gentoo, SuSE, Slackware, and maybe a few others.

grub and lilo allow one to (in the most general sense and for most desktops
and laptops), choose any combination of kernel and root filesystem at boot
time.  I realize that the zaurus has many constraints that undoubtedly make
it more complex for it to do the same thing, but I get the impression from
all my reading that it should be feasible.

Can anyone comment on this, in particular for the microdrive zaurii?

As I said, I'd love to be able to boot my 3200 into OBSD or OZ depending on
the circumstances, and I certainly have adequate room on the microdrive to
allow me to have entirely different partitions (both for root and other
filesystems too -- and this is required for OBSD which uses a disk
partition/slice scheme that is quite different from the strict partition
scheme that linux uses) for each OS.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate seeing some replies to this post.

Thanks for all the other replies from list members to my many other
questions and posts.

-Kevin

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