bootloader installation

[Garance A Drosihn]

   [Hmm.  I could have sworn I posted this yesterday, but I don't
    see it anywhere.  Apologies if this is a duplicate]

At 10:36 AM -0500 10/7/08, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
>
>We really need to make installation work better. Can we include a 
>port of Apple's HFS implementation in base? I know APSL1 was 
>impossible, but are there any thoughts on APSL2 now? Having HFS 
>support should also be valuable on x86 with more people dual-booting 
>FreeBSD/OS X now.

It seems to me that we could get away without any implementation of HFS.
All we need is a sample HFS partition, with a large area on it reserved
as a fake HFS file.  Then have something which knows how to write the
boot loader to that area.  Note that this doesn't have to be a full
implementation of HFS, just something that knows where the first byte
of the reserved area is, and knows how to write to the raw disk.

Make the reserved area two or three times the current size of the boot
loader, or have two or three reserved areas (each being a separate fake
HFS file).  The reason for extra areas is so you could keep three
different versions of the bootloader available.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu