Squeezing out some 70 bytes out of the boot2 loader

[Adrian Penisoara]

Hi,

On Jan 21, 2008 12:21 AM, Tim Kientzle <kientzle at freebsd.org> wrote:

> Adrian Penisoara wrote:
> > Hello
> >
> >   I am trying to hack in some symlink support into the
> [sys/boot/i386/]boot2
> > bootloader (for my project [1]) and I seem to fall short of about 69
> bytes:
> >
> ...
> >
> > [1] I'm trying to get support for /boot being mounted as a separate FS
> and
> > as such I would need to have a "self-pointing" symlink (e.g. "boot -> ."
> )
>
> Just because there is a symlink doesn't mean boot2 has
> to follow it.
>
> I haven't looked at the boot2 code, but I presume
> there's the equivalent of "chdir boot" in there.
> What if you just ignored failure (if there's no
> "boot" entry or "boot" isn't a dir, assume the
> boot files are in the root of the FS).
>
> Wouldn't that work just as well and require less space?


Actually the code which should be modified is common for multiple
platforms/loaders and I fear I might be breaking more things than resolving
what I want. And I would not like adding yet another hardcoded "/boot"
string in there ;).

Thanks,
Adrian Penisoara
ROFUG / EnterpriseBSD