Re: [RFC] netboot changes

[OKUJI Yoshinori]

From: Thierry Laronde <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [RFC] netboot changes
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:13:41 +0100

> Just a question (partly related to netboot). I plan to add the ability
> to use kind of "grub environment variables" allowing the reuse of
> informations obtained (say that an enhanced bootp could read the `bf'
> entry and put it in KERNEL, then the command : kernel $KERNEL would
> allow the automatic booting, etc...). Do you agree with this way ?

No, at this stage. IIRC, someone posted a patch to add variables into
GRUB, but I rejected it, because there was no way to include the
support without breaking backward compatibility (The definition of the
command-line interface doesn't allow to replace some text with
another).

I agree that such a feature will be useful and should be added in the
future, but we need to discuss GRUB's scripting language seriously,
before extending the command-line interface randomly. As I often say,
this is too early to discuss.

> several lists of blocks spread all around). Do you think it would be worth
> the effort to create a kind of multiboot compliant loader able to load
> these files considered as drivers (with the ability to have this kind of
> "drivers" kept outside from the grub kernel, and having only two things
> to keep in grub : the ability to scan the pci buses; a loader --- kind
> of exec command --- able to load these external programs).

That should be addressed by dynamic loading support, as the file TODO
says. That will be the main target in GRUB 2.0.

Okuji