Re: Prep bootloader

On Mar 8, 2006, at 8:31 AM, Tim Rightnour wrote:

>
> On 08-Mar-2006 Jochen Kunz wrote:
>>> We can essentially ship a script which will generate a
>>> bootimage from /netbsd, and write it out to the root drive.
>> What about a bootloader that reads /netbsd out of the root file  
>> system?
>> This would avoid the partition table fsck entirely.
>
> The answer is mildy annoying.  You can write a second stage  
> bootloader for
> prep, theoretically at least, but the only way to get the firmware  
> to load it,
> is still to have the magical boot partition.  So while we can write a
> bootloader that will read netbsd off the disk, we will still have  
> to go through
> partition table gyrations in order to boot.  Given that.. I'm not  
> sure it's
> worth anyone's time to write one, and I'm not really sure what the  
> benefit
> would be.

After the install, it would be static.  you could replace the kernel  
in /
and get a new kernel.  It would also make prep act most other ports.