| 1 |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- |
| 2 |
Hash: SHA1 |
| 3 |
|
| 4 |
On 06/21/2012 11:00 AM, Ian Stakenvicius wrote: |
| 5 |
>> A firmware replacement for the BIOS does not need to worry about |
| 6 |
>> floppy drives, hard drives, optical drives, usb devices, isa |
| 7 |
>> devices, pci devices and pci express drives, etcetera, because |
| 8 |
>> those live on buses, which the kernel can detect. It would need |
| 9 |
>> a device tree to inform the kernel of what buses are available, |
| 10 |
>> but that would be specific to a given board, rather than what is |
| 11 |
>> attached to it. If the end user makes hardware changes, the |
| 12 |
>> kernel should be able to handle that, with the exception of |
| 13 |
>> changes involving RAM, which I believe go into the device tree. |
| 14 |
> |
| 15 |
> I take it the above statement is based on the kernel being |
| 16 |
> directly placed within the BIOS/firmware/nvram on the board, such |
| 17 |
> that you couldn't boot anything else but that kernel? |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
That is correct. |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
> Otherwise I don't see how you could get away with the BIOS not |
| 22 |
> worrying about all those devices.. IE, I don't forsee many general |
| 23 |
> x86 users giving up their ability to boot off usb stick or cdrom or |
| 24 |
> pxe based on a boot-time bios choice, or to boot windows or |
| 25 |
> alternative linux kernels (which could be located who knows where) |
| 26 |
> at whim. And I don't see how an alternative BIOS would be able to |
| 27 |
> provide this ability without dealing with all the things Duncan |
| 28 |
> mentioned... |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
An initramfs should be able to provide all of that functionality. |
| 31 |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- |
| 32 |
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) |
| 33 |
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ |
| 34 |
|
| 35 |
iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJP4zgzAAoJECDuEZm+6ExkeSUP/0PrjZtnWvbdXpTYwTN/U1wq |
| 36 |
lVl/nx6mXAq6wwxrhgHMzMvzh68oxqAhZgOASLFoQnO92WbVJzxBZtxBQftR5TGV |
| 37 |
k5NGVKCLwVkIi7tQGLk3vLHo3l6MnmwCjmfSCSbr7VEqil2hgy5EwhUiWvibzKlp |
| 38 |
34m9g75Z/JR/dMk7qcG7z2lvJNSDlL2Ufgqi5YPQqqmqsMHGi350ZM91dkilOkV2 |
| 39 |
OtBwJzD+JlvQl+ALBv33KmI37VslcB/ydcx08YfE6BuOkHdusOM6/Den4JUrmS2I |
| 40 |
WDvcejzgxjneOifoL+0hiM9ooG3L6Q19G3ZNSSqAit85P5ms6Cm9Bul2lO6+EiQu |
| 41 |
iwYLcH/5nwkVC/8bRaHvzTnSaKyvyip9lKzeZyD9fnsMirxV6R3T3aWyIwhBdb8E |
| 42 |
pe85C+n4Wd5n4nhuwQW8AP860yftco9aNSrx1uIb+PMEi38+yLTwNjrR/shQ7RcK |
| 43 |
76mpWIWat/YpLRNF9Va7PN3FaslsTGVyQdgcBtci9S9IXWhwGyc7ZDS7DIq7CYTT |
| 44 |
9pE9dYqDOmEl0kWt5e4EgrjD4ibwhOsvddBJBcW2spphnRBuHwkzdp7K7pW3KX1z |
| 45 |
Wj4triKllBLwMJvIcDk6Nv0tm0YO+kzxDhEsjBajjDR48652ijF6RYLi2cV7Ui+9 |
| 46 |
Hnsvgz6oEc7sNL9VbPnZ |
| 47 |
=Aacv |
| 48 |
-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
Archives