Re: [9fans] how small can you get

[Sean Quinlan <seanq@research.bell-labs.com>]

That is exactly the way we have headed with plan 9 here at the labs.
The current internal version of the kernel has this functionality.
We are also in the process of redoing the /boot.  The idea is
to use rc as the boot scripting language.  The combination of these two
ideas means that 9load can be greatly simplified, and we can have scenarios
such as
	9load->local kernel -> setup ip; connected to fs; load kernel over 9p -> reboot

The local kernel is just a fancy bootloader.

The only tricky aspects to getting this to work is resetting the various
devices that potentially can be doing DMA during or soon after the reboot.

Another issue is the kernel configuration enviroment.

email me if you want more details.

seanq


Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> 
> That tiny kernel from anothy is pretty encouraging.
> 
> OK, unless it makes people REALLY unhappy, we're going to look into a way
> to get plan9 to boot plan9. We're finding that OSes make pretty good
> bootstraps, since they generally are current on hardware bugs and glitches
> that bootstrap loaders lag on. Making an OS boot an OS is not that hard
> anyway.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> ron