Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750761AbWJEERt (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Oct 2006 00:17:49 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750782AbWJEERt (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Oct 2006 00:17:49 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:44736 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750761AbWJEERt (ORCPT ); Thu, 5 Oct 2006 00:17:49 -0400 Message-ID: <45248751.4060607@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:17:21 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20060913) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Eric W. Biederman" CC: vgoyal@in.ibm.com, 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> <4523D0AF.5000907@zytor.com> In-Reply-To: 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: 1170 Lines: 32 Eric W. Biederman wrote: > "H. Peter Anvin" writes: > >> Well, it doesn't help if what you end up with for some bootloader is a >> nonfunctioning kernel. > > I agree. We need to look at what is happening closely. > However just because we have some initial glitches doesn't mean we > shouldn't give up. > > With grub you can say: > kernel --type=biglinux /path/to/bzImage > > As I read the code it won't necessarily force the type of kernel image > grub will use but it will refuse to boot if it doesn't recognize > the kernel as the type specified. > > The code for grub is in stage2/boot.c:load_image(). It tries a few > other formats before it tests for the linux magic number but > it won't recognize an ELF format executable unless it is a mutliboot > or a BSD executable. > This isn't just about Grub, though. There is probably about a dozen bootloaders in use on i386, if not more. -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/