AoE INT13h progress

"James Harper" <[email protected]> Thu, 8 Dec 2005 23:51:55 +1100
Newsgroups gmane.network.etherboot.devel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
I have something that works for me (readonly - write not implemented
yet), although is very hardcoded at the moment so probably wouldn't
actually work for anyone else.

If I share /dev/had using vblade (virtual AoE device), and boot it using
bochs with my AoE Etherboot rom, it loads up the GRUB menu, and then
probably a kernel after that... it's loading the kernel as I type this
but has either hung or is just taking a while (bochs isn't known for
it's speed, but it does make debugging and testing much easier!).
(later... still hung, and doesn't seem to be accessing int13 anymore...
it's either decompressing, slowly, or I've failed to protect the int13
hook code correctly and it's been overwritten).

The way I've done it is basically by decimating the pxe code, using the
bits that I want (it already had the interrupt hooks and trampoline
stuff in it) and blowing the rest away. Obviously to be merged into
Etherboot proper, that isn't the right way to go about it. Shouldn't be
too hard to merge back in though.

The problems to be solved before I can put something up for people to
look at are:
. What do I use as the geometry of the drive? I'm just hardcoding stuff
for now but obviously that isn't going to work outside my setup.
Actually just thinking about it... maybe I can ask AoE what the geometry
is...
. How to make it exist with Etherboot in a way that is actually useful.

The things to be done before it is truly useful are:
. 'write' and 'extended write' Int13 functions
. any other Int13 function that turns out to be required.
. A config menu of some sort, eg for setting the geometry and turning
AoE booting on and off.

Anyway, it's not turning out to be nearly as hard as I thought. I'll put
the code up somewhere once it is tidy enough that I'm not ashamed of it
:)

James



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