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

[Michal Ostrowski <mostrows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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).

PXELinux should work with any PXE-enabled NIC and thus does not face the
same driver-support issues as grub.

This functionality is enabled by using the Linux code that is wrapped
around a vmlinux to form a zImage.  I've come up with two ways of doing
this; as part of the xen build, or a seperate shell-script ("mkzen").

Both methods reach into a specified Linux-kernel build tree to grab the
bits for the wrapper.  The result, from the boot-loader's point of view
looks identical to a zImage.

However, running in this environment, Xen must now accept arguments in
the format used between a zImage and a vmlinux and distinguish between
this format and the multi-boot format.

Also, since grub is not being used, loading of multiple modules is not
supported.  Thus I've created a tool to package multiple images, with
parameter lists into a "meta-ramdisk".  My patch also includes code for
Xen to extract multiple images from such a meta-ramdisk.

Comments/suggestions appreciated.

-- 
Michal Ostrowski <mostrows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Attachment: bootloader.patch
Description: Text Data

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part