Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:27:16 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Tom Bartol <bartol@salk.edu>
To:        George Michaelson <ggm@connect.com.au>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: modifying boot mgrs FROM FREEBSD 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95.970806161313.1888F-100000@pauling.salk.edu>
In-Reply-To: <27991.870908958@connect.com.au>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help


On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, George Michaelson wrote:

> I also had this idea. I suspect that for the critical purpose: writing back
> that the current opsys is to be rebooted to irrespective of what tunings
> the manager has, this would do.
> 
> But there are lots of reasons why its a bad move. its another critical path
> to go wrong if you change the boot manager in unexpected ways. If the damn
> thing is installed and hosted from inside FreeBSD, then changes are likely
> to be made in ways which are self-consistent.

Yes, this is certainly a big concern.  If your master copy of the boot
blocks lives inside FreeBSD then all will be well but then this would not
be convenient from other environments...  And of course whatever randomly
chosen boot manager you happen to be using won't generally be tunable from
any randomly chosen OS anyway, nor will there generally exist such
powerful low-level I/O tools like dd.  If your goal is to able to tune
your boot blocks from "wherever you are" you're going to have to hold your
breath for lots of different OSes to get it together (i.e. it ain't gonna
happen).  At least with FreeBSD, the tools exist now to do this sort of
thing, even if you do have to roll your own.  :-)

> 
> I think Jordans comments stand: don't hold your breath.
> 
> -George
> 

And don't bang your head against the wall either...  Just climb over it!

Tom





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.95.970806161313.1888F-100000>