Message-ID: <46674C96.7090104@zytor.com>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:08:54 -0700
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
CC: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
       Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@in.ibm.com>, Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>,
       Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>,
       v12n <virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org>,
       lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 6/7] i386: make the bzImage payload an ELF file
References: <20070606225837.654272428@goop.org> <20070606230922.476662240@goop.org> <4667462A.2010404@zytor.com> <466749C8.2010700@goop.org>
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Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure I fully understand the mechanism you're proposing.  You
> have the 16-bit setup code, the 32-bit decompressor, and an ELF.gz. Once
> the decompressor has extracted the actual ELF file, are you proposing
> that it properly parse the ELF file and follow its instuctions to put
> the segments in the appropriate places, or are you assuming that the
> decompressor can just skip that part and plonk the ELF file where it wants?
> 
> In other words, do you see the Phdrs as being descriptive or prescriptive?
> 

I was thinking prescriptive, having the decompressor read the output
stream and interpret it as ELF.  I guess a descriptive approach could be
made to work, too (I haven't really thought about that avenue of
approach), but the prescriptive model seems more powerful, at least to me.

	-hpa
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