Re: [Xen-devel] RFC/Patch: Support for other bootloaders

[Michal Ostrowski <mostrows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 16:26 +0000, Tim Deegan wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 10:46:02AM -0500, Michal Ostrowski wrote:
> > I need to net-boot xen on an HS20 blade.  HS20's have a Broadcom NIC,
> > which is not supported by grub.  The attached patch allows me to build a
> > Xen image which I can boot using PXELinux  (and the entire SysLinux
> > family of boot-loaders).
> 
> Did you try using mbootpack for this?  (I haven't tested its output with
> PXELinux, so I don't know if it would work.)

No.  This is the first I've heard of it.

Given the two implementations, let's compare and discuss...

My objective was to try to use the Linux bits as-is and to have Xen
recognize that it is not loaded via GRUB (are there any other
non-GRUB-related multi-boot implementations?).  As you can see, the
changes required for Xen to recognize the parameters as passed out of
Linux's setup.S are not very complicated.  Figuring out where everything
is is the tough part.

I'm not attached at all to necessarily reach into a Linux build tree to
extract a built setup and bootsect.  I just think this is the easiest
way to do it.   x86 BIOS code is just icky and so I'd like to be able to
avoid having to maintain or even change it.   I think it's easier to
have Xen get data out of boot_params.

So, what I think it boils down to is whether Xen should accept
parameters passed into it in Linux-style boot_params array, or only
accept parameters in GRUB format.

-- 
Michal Ostrowski <mostrows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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