New Boot-Loader

[Devin Teske]

On Mar 28, 2011, at 7:03 AM, John Baldwin wrote:

> On Monday, March 28, 2011 12:48:03 am Devin Teske wrote:
>> Hi fellow hackers,
>> 
>> I'm designing an open-sourced replacement boot-loader for FreeBSD. I feel
>> that the existing options in the boot-loader menu today can be whittled down
>> significantly with a stateful menu system rather than a single-action item
>> menu system.
> 
> Are you reimplementing loader from scratch or just hacking on the 4th scripts 
> to display the menu, etc.?

The menu is implemented as a series of 4th modules. Here's an earlier version of the code which I've been using on my LiveDistro boot disc:

druidbsd.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/druidbsd/druidbsd/druidbsd/mdroot/boot/


> 
>> In designing the new menu, I'd like to get your opinions. From old:
>> 
>> 	FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE: twitpic.com/4e485w
>> 
>> to new:
>> 
>> 	Replacement Boot-Loader: twitpic.com/4e46ol
>> 
>> NOTE: The final release will have a single-user mode option.
>> 
>> The new menu allows for more flexibility as selecting options 2 ("Boot 
>> Verbose") or 3 ("ACPI Support") independently toggles the status, updates the
>> menu item, and redisplays the menu -- ever-waiting until the user ultimately
>> presses ENTER, "1", or escapes to the prompt and types "boot". Thus, one could
>> potentially launch single-user mode with verbosity on and ACPI disabled (if
>> one so desired).
> 
> This is good.  I think DFly already does this and I had a low priority item on 
> my todo list to eventually implement this in the current menu myself.
> 

I think you'll like the Forth code that I've written. I strived to keep it clean and modular. IMHO I feel that it's really easy to change/enhance/extend based on the menu mechanics as seen in "menu.rc", and "include/menu-commands.4th".


> -- 
> John Baldwin

-- 
Cheers,
Devin Teske


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