From:	"Nicholas R LeRoy" <nleroy AT norland DOT com>
Message-Id:	<9702051144.ZM22114@dopey>
Date:	Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:44:09 -0600
In-Reply-To:	owner-opendos@mail.tacoma.net
	"~OD: RE: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32?" (Feb 5, 11:32am)
References:	<9702051732 DOT AA29079 AT norsun DOT norland DOT com>
To:	opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net
Subject:	Re: ~OD: RE: [opendos] OpenDOS + Win95 w/FAT32?
Mime-Version:	1.0
Sender:	owner-opendos AT mail DOT tacoma DOT net

> From: "Weiqi Gao" <weiqigao AT crl DOT com>
>
> Nicholas R LeRoy <nleroy AT norland DOT com> (me) wrote:
>
> >                                               Seems *TOO* obvious to
> >me that that's what we really want.  Build the OpenDOS kernel such that
> >it understand command line options, etc. like the Linux kernel, and have
> >the lilo (odlo?) load the kernel from there.  The only thing we really
> >need that we don't have is a boot sector in the partition (you can't
> install
> >lilo on a FAT filesystem) -- obviously an EXT2 would work.
>
> I'm of the opinion that we don't need YABL (Yet Another Boot Loader) for
> OpenDOS.  Grub does a just fine job booting MS-DOS, OpenDOS, Linux, and
> Windows 95.  If you don't know grub, it's basically lilo, but can be used
> without Linux.

Maybe so -- I don't know grub.  It seems to have just come out and I haven't
had the time and / or need to check it out yet.  But, basically, the idea
would be to use a boot loader that is dumb (small).  The other thing that
would be nice would be a way to have this boot loader load extra modules
for the kernel, so a single micro-kernel, I guess, would take over from
there -- you wouldn't have to build up a kernel with ext2 support -- just
have a generic kernel that would be loaded and the boot loader would then
load the ext2 module (not because it detects it -- only because *you* told
it to (in the config file).

If grub can do these kinds of things, or could be modified to do these,
then it does sound like the answer.  And, as I said, I think it would be
a score for the Linux community to have these capabilities, also.
If we could have one unified boot loader do all this, then we'd *all* be
winners.  :-)  I wonder if I should post my idea to one of the Linux
groups?

-Nick (Linux advocate and Green Bay Packer Fan (just *had* to mention that)!!!)



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