Re: serial line - file interface

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Friday 03 February 2006 13:10, Kiril Paunov wrote:
> I hope that this will be interesting for you...

Great. :)

> I'm making some experiments with embedde OS, currently with RTEMS on i386.
> I use some PC (to hand) for my tests and got to the problem with booting.
> See, it's just to much time for each boot! So I made some changes to grub
> to be able to boot images from the serial line. I know that there are
> better sulutions for this problem but maybe this can help on some way to
> the grub project. There is a new command 'comload' - it's a bit silly but
> that's Ok for me. That's what I have used first... before the idea for the
> `(com)' device.

I'd like to ask why you invented your own protocol. Why don't you use an 
existing protocol, for example, Kermit?

> +     * include/grub/comio.h io/comio.c: New file interface.
> +     This allows to download and boot ower the serial line.
> +     I't usefull for people that work with embedded systems.
> +     It's not very good covered by the file interface but i't
> +     works well. There is not a good abstraction for this kind
> +     off filesystem (net/serial/???)!!!

This should be handled by the network device layer. Actually, the purpose of 
"net" devices in GRUB 2 is to support all non-disk devices.

Okuji