Re: DragonFly boot2 - moved out of commits thread

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Bill Hacker wrote:
>  > - 16K is enough space to hold a 'next-stage' bootloader with menus, and 
>  > a bit of graphics (Gag is a good look-and-feel example, BSD splash 
>  > screens less so..).
>
> You might be interested to have a look at this:
>
> http://wiki.freebsd.org/OliverFromme/BootLoader
>
> I think DragonFly should be able to port it over without
> difficulty.  Last time I looked, DF's boot loader was
> still pretty much the same as FreeBSD's.
>
> Best regards
>    Oliver

Good start.

And 'compliments'  on not going off and coding it in flavor-of-the month 
language....

(though it is a travesty what FICL'ization has done to the sheer 
elegance of 'real' Forth... but that wasn't your doing...)

As soon as I get a logo into place that doesn't remind me of a chancroid 
disease, (not your choice, either ... I hope..)

I'll go see if I can find my NASM code mods that recognize several 
'other' OS for the prior stage....

What is, IMNSHO, missing, is the ability to say 'Oh s**t, wrong device' 
and select a menu choice that allows 'REWIND', w/o going through the 
whole underlying machine BIOS POST and device scan .... and missing it 
again as you answer the phone ...

Hardware RAID controllers with massive arrays would rather one refrained 
from all that 'coz their little state-machine minds are already up and 
getting into their uniforms.

A start might be to actually display the device one is sitting on, AND 
all others detected during the prior stage - hopefully with more 
spy-work as to what they might hold than the initial boot loader has 
space for...  IOW - a rescan is in order... then a sub-menu 'Select 
another boot device' or some such that is more friendly than dropping 
out to the 'mount' prompt.

The one with the examples that do not ordinarily work as shown...

So sayeth he who is constantly moving devices about and having to use 
one OS to mount and edit the /etc/fstab (Grub, Lilo...) of some other OS.

On which score

- 'wishlist':

If the boot chainloader knows where to find its next stage(s) and 
ultimately the kernal (as it will do to boot-single to tell you it 
cannot find.....)

. .. then why cannot /etc/fstab fall-back to, in effect 'mount relative' 
. ... (from wherever-the-hell we are now..).


Bill