mbr boot selector

[slick]

>>Hi i wrote my own fdisk(8) and now would like to implement universal
>>multiboot support in it.

Thorsten Glaser
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 2:45 PM
To: slick
Cc: Port-I386; OpenBSD; Hackers
Subject: Re: mbr boot selector

>Get a life.

your funny

>I'd like to know how you are going to fit multiboot into
like 446 bytes or even less.

netbsd already does it

You only have to modify boot code a bit and create a new data structure.

Boot code for boot selector

boot code checks for manual or automatic boot flag,
if automatic, check for default boot option value and do the rest.
if manual, print the 4 partition label, start the timer, wait for input.

Data structure for boot selector

-default value 1-5
-timer   value 1-*
-first   entry (string containing the partition label)
-second  entry (string containing the partition label)
-third   entry (string containing the partition label)
-fourth  entry (string containing the partition label)
-fifth   entry (could be used to boot the extended MBR)

that structure could fit in about 50bytes

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