i386/loader compiled with NOFORTH

[John Baldwin]

On 25-Apr-2003 Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 12:07:35PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
>> 
>> On 25-Apr-2003 Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
>> > On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 05:45:15PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> On 24-Apr-2003 Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
>> >> > On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 02:21:17PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> On 24-Apr-2003 Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
>> >> >> > On 5.x, loader(8) compiled with -DNOFORTH, results in
>> >> >> > a system without a console.  This does not affect the
>> >> >> > RELENG_4.
>> >> >> > 
>> >> >> > Can someone who knows this code please look into it?
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> No kernel console or no loader console?  The usual problem with
>> >> >> no kernel console on 5.x is lack of device.hints.
>> >> >> 
>> >> > No kernel console.  The device.hints, it's there under /boot;
>> >> > I only reinstalled loader(8) with -DNOFORTH, and this gave me
>> >> > "no console" behavior.  Can you try it locally?
>> >> 
>> >> Since device.hints is read in by Forth code, I wouldn't be
>> >> surprised if it didn't work.  When you break into the 10
>> >> second countdown, do you have any hints set in the loader
>> >> environment?
>> >> 
>> > Yes, figured this out by myself already.  I've ended up
>> > uncommenting the "hints" line in GENERIC config, everything
>> > is OK now, and bzip2(1) also works, modulo the memory
>> > restrictions -- only level 1 bzipping works that requires
>> > ~250K of memory.
>> > 
>> > John, is there a way to fix btx/loader/whatever so that
>> > heap memory is not limited to 640K?
>> 
>> Not really.  At least, not easily.  We load the kernel up above 1mb,
>> but we don't know how much memory lives up above 1mb and we assume
>> that there is enough for the kernel and that's it.
>> 
> I was referring to this message from loader(8):
> 
> BIOS 639kB/129856kB available memory
> 
> So I thought that the memory allocation in i386/loader is
> limited to real mode's 640KB, no?
> 
> Also, IIRC, the installation requirement was 8MB or so,
> and the runtime requirement was 4MB (these are 4.x numbers
> from my memory), so we can safely assume that we have at
> least 4MB of memory?  Now that I look at it, I see that
> GENERIC kernel in 5.0 is 4.82MB, and so we can probably
> always assume that we have 8MB of memory.

We assume that we have enough memory to stick the kernel
up there, but that's the only assumption we make. :)

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/