Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751079AbWJDU2j (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:28:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751082AbWJDU2j (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:28:39 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:14531 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751079AbWJDU2h (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:28:37 -0400 Message-ID: <45241945.2020105@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 13:27:49 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20060913) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vgoyal@in.ibm.com CC: "Eric W. Biederman" , Andrew Morton , linux kernel mailing list , Reloc Kernel List , ak@suse.de, horms@verge.net.au, lace@jankratochvil.net, magnus.damm@gmail.com, lwang@redhat.com, dzickus@redhat.com, maneesh@in.ibm.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 12/12] i386 boot: Add an ELF header to bzImage References: <20061003170032.GA30036@in.ibm.com> <20061003172511.GL3164@in.ibm.com> <20061003201340.afa7bfce.akpm@osdl.org> <20061004042850.GA27149@in.ibm.com> <45233B58.1050208@zytor.com> <20061004202244.GA3629@in.ibm.com> In-Reply-To: <20061004202244.GA3629@in.ibm.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1129 Lines: 29 Vivek Goyal wrote: > > Eric/Peter, > > How about just extending bzImage format to include some info in real mode > kernel header. Say protocol version 2.05. I think if we just include two > more fields, is kernel relocatable and equivalent of ELF memsz, then probably > this information should be enough for kexec bzImage loader to load and run > a relocatable kernel from a different address. > What would be the exact semantics of the "equivalent of ELF memsz"? I have balked on that one in the past, because the proposed semantics were unsafe. I suspect we need at least one more piece of data, which is the required alignment of a relocated kernel. Either which way, it seems clear that there is some re-engineering that needs to be done, and I think we need to better understand *why* the proposed patch failed. Can this failure be reproduced in a simulator? -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/