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

[Tim Deegan <Tim.Deegan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 03:52:32PM -0000, Ian Pratt wrote:
> [*] would it possible to do something whereby the vmlinuz and initrd
> image were simply cat'ed together? This might swing the balance the
> other way from a userbility POV, not sure.

It should be.  xen-vmlinux is an ELF, so if we can be *sure* that the
largest file offset in an ELF header is the same as the size of the
file, then it would be possible to just do

 $ cat vmlinux-xen0 initrd-xen0 >pseudo-initrd

 boot: xen pseudo-initrd.

and then have Xen root around in the ELF headers to see where the break
is.

Suporting gzipped vmlinux should be possible too; Xen needs to unzip the
kernel and then knows that the next byte after the gzipped input will be
ramdisk.  (As long as the bootloader doesn't helfully unzip the
'ramdisk' for us.)

Michal, what do you think?  It sounds like this could be added to your
code without too much horror.

Tim.

-- 
Tim Deegan                           (My opinions, not the University's)
Systems Research Group
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2005
Attend MEDC 2005 May 9-12 in Vegas. Learn more about the latest Windows
Embedded(r) & Windows Mobile(tm) platforms, applications & content.  Register
by 3/29 & save $300 http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6883&alloc_id=15149&op=click
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xen-devel