[Etherboot-developers] bootloaders....

[<ebi...@ln...>]

A while ago there was a conversation about a bootloader wish list,
to get a feel for where we would like to go.  

I haven't had time to do as thourough survey of all of the options
but, my tenative conclusion is that I can get the most bang for my buck
by enhancing Etherboot.  It is small, and runs both under LinuxBIOS
and the stock x86 BIOS's.  And it is written in C so it should be
straight forward to graft on the OpenBIOS forth interpreter.

The code is GPL'd and Ken Yap is a good maintainer, and the code is
mature after having been in use for a long time.  This means all sorts
of interesting cases are already handled, and the problem of booting
is well understood.

The portability will need a nudge, but Etherboot is in considerably
better shape the Linux 1.0 in that regard.

Etherboot may not be the best solution and others are free to pursue
the courses they see best.  But it looks like I can extend it to do
what I need with just a little work, and I am already familiar with
it.  Additionally there has been a fair amount of success by others
extending etherboot to be a more general purpose bootloader for
LinuxBIOS.  The other etherboot developers don't see any real problems
with including that code so long as it is optional.

Ron Minich and company are working on Plan9.  And there are definitely
other options out there.  For the moment I am going to pick the easy
low hanging fruit, with etherboot.  And after that we shall see.

Now back to being quiet and finishin the LinuxBIOS port for MCR.

Eric