bootloader & head.S weirdness (patch)

Cort Dougan cort at fsmlabs.com
Wed Nov 24 06:16:29 EST 1999


Do you keep the list around after the initialization?  We do something
similar with the prep residual data but after we grab what we want we free
the RAM.  

} The idea is to pass the bootinfo not as a fixed (inherently back/forewards
} incompatible) struct, but as a concatenation of records. Each record contains
} a tag ID, a size, and data:
} 
} struct bi_record {
}     unsigned short tag;                 /* tag ID */
}     unsigned short size;                /* size of record (in bytes) */
}     unsigned long data[0];              /* data */
} };
} 
} The parsing of the bootinfo is done in m68k_parse_bootinfo() in
} arch/m68k/kernel/setup.c. If you add new fields in the booter, older kernels
} still work fine because they just skip bi_records with unknown tag IDs.
} 
} Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
} 
} P.S. As a sidenote: we did our job that well that we never had to change the
}      bootinfo on Amiga later anyway, see the `2.0' bootinfo version (`1.x' was
}      pre-bi_record) as a testimony :-)
} --
} Geert Uytterhoeven -- Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP} -- geert at linux-m68k.org
} 
} In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
} when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
} 							    -- Linus Torvalds

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/





More information about the Linuxppc-dev mailing list