Re: Handling >4MB kernels on cats (Was: CVS commit: src)

Izumi Tsutsui <[email protected]> Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:52:50 +0900
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.devel.cvs,gmane.os.netbsd.ports.cats
Message-ID <[email protected]>
[email protected] wrote:

>  	I'm quite taken by the idea of having a boot option to tell a
>  	kernel to prompt to load a ramdisk after autoconfig - a
>  	generalised version of what atari does now with its 'md2'.
> 
>  	- It should be completely MI, so all ports benefit
>  	- You gain access to all compiled in kernel drivers - eg: USB
>  	- You can drop the distinction between INSTALL and GENERIC kernels

IMO current atari's md_root.c is a bit ugly because:
- it can load an image only from a raw device
- device nodes for fs image are hardcoded
- it uses hardcoded unit numbers to select load devices
- no sanity checks against a loaded image

Maybe we should also check sys/kern/subr_tftproot.c and
sys/dev/kloader.c and consider to load images from some file system.

But if ABLE/Cyclone support booting from CD-ROM, it would be
much easier to provide an install ISO image using cd9660 root
and mfs/tmpfs, as -current i386.
---
Izumi Tsutsui