Well, shoot, if this is the case it's an application problem. If it
starts as part of rc, init is already running and the existing system
already has all the hooks you want. (I already do something like
this for McAfee's WebShield -- the first thing I do in the installer
init is to tell the kernel to shut up, and then I put up the
appropriate nith boxes to explain any horrible mistakes. But it's
not a kernel problem.)
>With a hack in the bootsect.s stuff to
>save state and set VGA mode and set a hatch pattern (about 50-100 bytes in
>code size), this is all possible.
This, on the other hand, is far more interesting; If I was to do it,
I'd piggyback the code onto top of some of the compression stuff that
already exists in the kernel, the compress the boot image via gzip
before wiring it into the kernel (if the application programmer wants
their own pretty text image, they can get it in userland.)
>* when Something Very Bad happens, I want something that is better than
>now. Say fsck fails. You're screwed now.
This is an application problem, not a kernel problem.
____
david parsons \bi/ orc@pell.chi.il.us
\/