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Re: load_end == bss_end == -1
From: |
Yoshinori K. Okuji |
Subject: |
Re: load_end == bss_end == -1 |
Date: |
Tue, 14 May 2002 22:04:57 +0900 |
User-agent: |
Wanderlust/2.8.1 (Something) SEMI/1.14.3 (Ushinoya) FLIM/1.14.3 (UnebigoryĆmae) APEL/10.3 Emacs/21.2 (i386-debian-linux-gnu) MULE/5.0 (SAKAKI) |
At Tue, 14 May 2002 11:06:28 +0300,
Yuri Zaporogets wrote:
> IMO, multiboot kluge is one big hack itself :) . Modifying two lines
> in boot.c won't harm anything, and it's not a violation of current
> Multiboot standard (behavior of the boot loader under such conditions
> isn't specified anywhere). 'mbchk' program runs all tests successfully,
> so we don't need to touch it at all.
Hmm... So we increase hacks? Oh, this world must be hell.
Okay, if you stick to the idea so much, I don't object. I'm not very
concerned about the a.out kludge anyway.
But it is essential to update the Multiboot Specification precedently,
because I want to avoid any GRUB-specific extension to the spec, if
possible. Would you like to work on this?
On another thing: I don't think it is a good idea to use -1 as invalid
values. It is 0xffffffff actually, so it must be valid
certainly. Therefore, I think it would be better to use 0 as invalid
values instead, because:
1. If you wanna load an OS image, (load_end_addr == 0) is
nonsense. That makes sense only when (load_addr == 0), but, even in
this case, (load_end_addr - load_addr == 0) means that no code is
loaded, so this case is also nonsense anyway.
2. (bss_end_addr == 0) is nonsense, because, as shown above,
load_end_addr must be greater than zero.
What do you think?
Okuji