Re: new SMP kernel on the old Netra X1

On Fri, 2025-09-05 at 11:25 +0200, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Friday 2025-09-05 08:09, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> 
> > Please keep in mind that SILO works with blocklists meaning that you
> > can't place the kernel in arbitrary locations and reference them as
> > files.
> 
> Not how I remember it.
> 
> x86 LILO kept blocklists of the kernel file, so you had to rerun
> it all the time. 
> 
> SILO on the other hand kept a blocklist on some drivers
> (/boot/*.b), and rerunning silo was only needed when a new
> silo.deb was installed, not when placing kernels.
> 
> 
> In any case, the boot process seems exceptionally similar between x86
> and SPARC OBP; x86 firmware loads sector 0 and OBP loads sector 1
> (because someone decided to put a disk label at sector 0 instead).
> Once your 512-byte program runs, you have free reign to load
> whatever other code in whatever complex ways you can think of.

You're right, it's the stage2 bootloader that is accessed via blocklists.

Adrian

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