kernel memory checks on boot vs. boot time

[Gary Jennejohn]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:22:09 +0000
Alexander Best <arundel at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Thu Mar 24 11, Andriy Gapon wrote:
> > on 23/03/2011 22:50 Oliver Fromme said the following:
> > > Beware, I don't know if this is the *only* thing preventing
> > > boot2 from booting an amd64 kernel.  There might be more.
> > > I haven't tried booting FreeBSD without the boot loader in
> > > a long time.  Probably not in this century.
> > 
> > Kind of hijacking the thread - while we are gradually moving from mbr+bsdlabel
> > to gpt and more, we are also moving from away from size-constrained boot2.
> > My vision is that boot2 and loader should fuse into something more powerful that
> > would reside in a boot partition, but with its config files on a "regular"
> > filesystem.
> 
> +1. being able to control the whole boot process by /etc/boot.conf would be
> great. there are defenately too many files in /boot. new users have no clue
> what boot, boot0, boot1, boot2, cdboot, gptboot, etc. are all about.
> 
> merging /boot/loader, /boot/gptboot and /boot/zfsgptboot would be really nice.
> building/installing all the mbr+bsdlabel boot files could be made dependable
> upon some variable (WITH_MBR_BOOT=), which could be disabled by default.
> 
> also moving away from forth to something more modern might be thinkable. having
> support for a modern scripting language might make it easier to come up with a
> nice graphical bootloader e.g. there're probably more advantages.
> 
> problem might be that the current gpart(8) manual recommends using 64k for the
> boot partition. that might not be enough, if ada0p1 should contain the
> functionality of all boot stages (including the loader), support for a modern
> scripting language and support for graphical menues (including a rudimentary
> vga/vesa driver for high res).
> 

I have no problem with any of these ideas as long as well-documented
knobs are provided to turn these "features" off and maintain "legacy"
functionality.

I'm running off disks where FreeBSD was installed 8 years ago and I have
no intention of using gpart(8) on any of them.  The same goes for
graphical bootloaders - I can't stand them.

-- 
Gary Jennejohn