Andi Kleen wrote:
> I'm not sure I understand the question. It would basically work like
> booting in BSD or most other Unixes: the bootloader knows ext2 and
> reads a filename that you pass as a command line option or a default
> from /. That file name would be available in the environment that is
> passed to init.
Okay, this only works in cases where Linux and the boot loader can
identify the location by some common means (e.g. device and path,
or maybe URL - see my other posting to this thread a few minutes ago),
and are both equipped to access this location.
I don't see the advantage over Alan's proposal of simply adding the
config data to the bzImage or whatever is the most common format on
the respective platform. You still have the same fundamental problem
to solve (i.e. accessing the file), plus you may need to extend the
boot loader(s) to support a new format ...
> I guess a single bootloader that supports it optionally would be enough
> for Daniel-Phillips-who-cannot-remember-where-he-put-his-System-maps ;)
So all distributions would have to use the same boot loader. And you
still may have to deal with multiple platforms.
I don't see much value in a solution that works only iff a large number
of constraints are met, even if they are commonly no problem at the
moment. As soon as the analysis of how you can obtain the config data
on a given system approaches the complexity of the detective work
required to figure out the exact configuration, there's no benefit.
What, IMHO, would be useful is something that works as easily and
reliably as uname -a
- Werner
-- _________________________________________________________________________ / Werner Almesberger, ICA, EPFL, CH werner.almesberger@ica.epfl.ch / /_IN_N_032__Tel_+41_21_693_6621__Fax_+41_21_693_6610_____________________/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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