FILO features request

Stefan Reinauer stepan at openbios.org
Fri Apr 16 06:57:00 CEST 2004


* Takeshi Sone <ts1 at tsn.or.jp> [040414 17:37]:
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 09:50:55AM -0700, YhLu wrote:
> > I hope it can
> > 1. understand grub.conf in HD  --- and append console=tty0
> > console=ttyS0,115200 automatically
> > 2. understand Linux Installation CD: /boot/loader/isolinux.cfg --- and
> > append console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200 automatically
> 
> I don't like the idea to have compatibility to existing bootloaders.
> It sounds like a beginning of nightmare.
 
Not necessarily. One could do this modular, just like the sound drivers
are now.. :)

> Instead, Linux CDs can directly support FILO.
> Boot CDs can have /boot/filo.conf, and installers can
> generate /boot/filo.conf in the installed hard disk.
> It's technically easy.
> Stefan Reinauer was positive to add this support to SuSE's installation
> CD when I talked to him about this issue.
 
For the user interface, one could go the way with modular code, too.
Elilo, the EFI boot loader, does a nice thing there. It has a "chooser"
interface, allowing several user interfaces. Each user interface has a
name, a probe function and a choose function. The probe function can
check whether the current chooser works on the current machine (on
Itanic this could be checking UGA availability before trying to show a
graphical menu)

> Maybe, we can make FILO to have the default config file in ROM, which
> includes the filo.conf from boot device (CD or HD).
> So the config file in ROM knows how to boot Etherboot in ROM.
> But this is too complicated at the moment.

How would that config file have to look? Something similar to the grub
menu.lst would be fitting, wouldn't it?

title Linux
  kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 console=ttyS0,115200n8
  initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd

Stefan




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