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From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
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	(bigwig.baldwin.cx); Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:32:22 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: Andrew Duane <aduane@juniper.net>,
	"freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>,
	Peter Grehan <grehan@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Soliciting opinions on an extension of the bootinfo structure
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On Thursday, September 08, 2011 6:48:19 pm Peter Wemm wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Peter Grehan <grehan@freebsd.org> wrote:
> >> I'm proposing an extension framework for the bootinfo structure used
> >> to pass information from the bootstrap/loader to the kernel. Although
> >> I'm only proposing this for the MIPS bootinfo, it's completely
> >> applicable to any of them.
> >>
> >> What I propose is adding an optional platform extension structure:
> >> bootinfo_pext, surrounded by #ifdef BOOTINFO_PEXT
> >
> >  Any reason not to put the vendor bits into another piece of loader 
metadata
> > ? That seems the extensible way to add additional info from the loader,
> > rather than extending bootinfo (as was the case pre-loader days).
> >
> > later,
> 
> It sounds like they're not using loader, which is probably a
> reasonable thing for their environment.

That doesn't stop you from adding metadata to the kernel.  It is just an array 
of variable length blobs appended after 'end'.  Any boot loader can support
adding metadata.

-- 
John Baldwin