[Fwd: Re: [PPCBoot-users] PPCboot vs ARMboot or Blob and a Merge with LinuxBIOS]

Ronald G Minnich rminnich at lanl.gov
Wed Oct 9 10:29:00 CEST 2002


On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Bari Ari wrote:

> > LinuxBIOS was designed to use Linux to boot the OS of choice.
>
> So was PPCBoot, but without excluding the resto of the world.

this is not the forum for PPCBoot vs. LinuxBIOS arguments. I Just Don't
Care. I am sure PPCBoot is wonderful software!

> So your boot sequence is LinuxBIOS => Linux => LinuxBIOS => Target OS?

no. The boot sequence is:
- LinuxBIOS -> Linux -> OS (i.e. on Pink)
- LinuxBIOS -> 9load -> Plan 9
- LinuxBIOS -> Etherboot built in to linuxbios -> OS of choice
- LinuxBios -> Etherboot (external ) -> OS of choice

In other words, we have lots of boot sequences depending on the target
system and OS.

The issue of *BSD is not that we can't boot it. We can. The issue is that
*BSD wants to make BIOS calls we don't support.

> Seems a bit overkill to  me.  Especially  in  systems  where  (flash)
> memory  is  tight  it  might be a PITA to have to reserve space for a
> Linux kernel just to initialize the hardware.

We Have Our Reasons. And, we don't always load linux in flash.

> The current version of PPCBoot boots Linux, VxWorks, QNX, and NetBSD.

terrific! I'm happy for you. But this is not a competition.

> It seems you do not know much about PPCBoot.

funny, as it seem syou don't know much about linuxbios. So we all need to
read more :-)

> PPCBoot also provides powerful scripting capabilties; busybox' "hush"
> shell has been integrated, so you can write standard shell scripts or
> run  conditional  command  sequences  using  "if...then...else...fi",
> "for...do...done", "while...do...done", "until...do...done", or using
> shortcuts like "cmd1 && cmd2" or "cmd1 || cmd2".

I really don't much like firmware that starts taking on the attributes of
an OS, but to each his own. If you're going to put an OS in firmware, just
make it an OS, not a pseudo-OS. But that's just my opinion.

anyway, I am sure PPCBoot is wonderful, and we should be sharing code, not
getting out our rulers to see whose BIOS is bigger.

ron




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