Re: OpenBSD and NetBSD

[OKUJI Yoshinori]

From: "ian.cass" <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: OpenBSD and NetBSD
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 12:41:38 +0000 (GMT)

> (howto, bootdev, BOOTAPIVER, endmark, extmem, cnvmem, bootargsmemmap size,
> bootargsmmap offset)
> 
> The boot args memmap is an array of structures containing information such
> as bios block dump, APM, hard drives, consoles.
> 
> The BOOTAPIVER here is non-zero and is a bitmask containing info about
> what format the memory map is in.

  Thanks. I got the source code of NetBSD and OpenBSD from the CVS,
and I glanced it.

  It seems that their booting methods are now quite diverse. They are
not compatible at all. I don't look at either of them deeply yet, but
OpenBSD uses a very similar way to Multiboot. I even suspect that they
stole the idea from Multiboot.

> Next step is to examine Grub & see how this fits in with what Grub is
> already doing.

  As for OpenBSD:

BOOTARG_MEMMAP   ... GRUB has code for this, to support Multiboot.
BOOTARG_DISKINFO ... GRUB has code for this partially, to support
                     Multiboot. The missing information is perhaps
                     only the checksum.
BOOTARG_APMINFO  ... GRUB has code for this, to support Multiboot. But
                     the required state of APM may be different.
BOOTARG_PCIINFO  ... GRUB doesn't have code for this.
BOOTARG_CONSDEV  ... GRUB has code for this, to support serial
                     terminals.

Because I haven't read the source code carefully, those may be
wrong. But I feel it wouldn't be so difficult to support recent
OpenBSD. (Maybe it is more difficult to fully support Multiboot
Specification 0.7...)

Okuji