Re: 2.1.93..

Leonard N. Zubkoff (lnz@dandelion.com)
Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:14:38 -0700


Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 12:09:30 -0500 (EST)
From: "Mark H. Wood" <mwood@mhw.oit.iupui.edu>

What about passing the location of the root volume "symbolically", by
using a tag string that the kernel would then expect to find in the
superblock of the selected volume? The bootloader could simply be told
what to pass; it doesn't have to understand filesystems at all unless it
tries to locate the kernel itself at boot time. (LILO doesn't do that.)

This would work for the root volume, but the harder problem is arranging to
boot from the correct drive. The kernel still needs to understand the mapping
between the host adapters and drives it sees and how the BIOS that controls
booting will identify them. Handling this mapping should not be dumped on
users unless there is *no* way it can be done automatically.

Leonard

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