Re: [patch] set prefix on PPC

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Feb 15, 2005, at 3:31 PM, Marco Gerards wrote:
> Ok.  But the file does not need to be blessed to boot from it.  It's
> just used so the user can use:
>
> boot hd,0
>
> instead of:
>
> boot hd,0:grubof
>
> To me the second sounds good enough.  Or does that cause other 
> problems?

Remember that resetting the PRAM (a rare but not unusual action on 
Macs) will revert to the stock firmware configuration, and if OS X is 
the only blessed OS, the user will find themselves unable to boot into 
Linux without a decent understanding of Open Firmware. Blessing GRUB 
would eliminate this problem*.

* If OS X is on a lower partition number, the user will still boot into 
OS X after a PRAM reset. However, if the firmware recognizes GRUB as a 
valid kernel, there is a graphical "select boot device" interface on 
newer machines that can be triggered by holding down the Option key at 
startup.

> > Ok. I assume you want to test my patch and review it further, so I
> > will wait for more comments before committing it.
>
> Sure, I will test and review it on both of my PPC systems and review
> the patch.  I hope you understand that it can take a while. :/

I hope I can talk you into taking a look soon, as this functionality is 
essential if we want to actually *use* GRUB2.

It should be pretty easy to build and see what happens... :) (See my 
patch from earlier today since current CVS doesn't build.)

> > > I don't want to add a fancy parser yet.  At the moment we just use a
> > > single argument.  If more will be used, this code has to be changed.
> >
> > And in that case, the format of "bootargs" will have to change
> > too. It's never too early to think about backwards compatibility,
> > especially if people are thinking of packaging and distributing a
> > grub2.deb... :)
>
> Huh?  Why would backward compatibility be broken?

If a user installs GRUB now with this bootargs patch, then later if we 
wish to add a debug option with "fancy parser" they will no longer be 
able to boot, as the syntax will change.

Now: "boot grubof hd0,6"
Later: "boot grubof prefix=hd0,6 debug=all"

Users trying to boot with the old syntax will fail.

-Hollis