Re: Prep bootloader

On 3/8/06, Matt Thomas <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 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.

Getting the second stage bootloader to boot on Cobalt was huge in
making it a useable device.

Andy