In <8kmab1$ja8$1@cesium.transmeta.com> H. Peter Anvin (hpa@zytor.com) wrote:
> Followup to: <ABPrbRvKcJ@khim.sch57.msk.ru>
> By author: "Khimenko Victor" <grub@khim.sch57.msk.ru>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>>
>> Who's the bright idea was to extend maximum kernel beyond 1MB and STILL write
>> only two bytes of sys_size in boot sector anyway ? And why it was done via
>> buf in first place ?
>>
> Victor: this field is obsolete and should only be used by the kernel
> boot sector.
Where it's marked as obsoleted ? I've not seen such warnings but I've SEEN
this field used by loadlin, for example. GRUB is not alone here.
> It's a bug in GRUB that it even looks at this field -- it should load the
> size of the kernel image file, period.
This is not so simple. GRUB and/or loadlin can be fixed, of course. But I'm
not sure you can assume that kernel image size will be ALWAYS known for ALL
bootloaders except kernel boot sector (and kernel boot sector can be fixed to
be able to load such kernels anyway, BTW). It CAN be done, for sure
(installation procedure will calculate kernel image size and put it some
"safe place" for future use). Just I do not think it's feasible - this size
if calculated in kernel build process anyway - whay to duplicate work ?
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jul 15 2000 - 21:00:19 EST