Re: [9fans] replacing 9load

[Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>]

Russ Cox wrote:

>     - write vm86 code for the kernel to replace the realmode
>       code.  vm86 code should be safer and more reliable
>       and will make the vesa and apm code run on more machines.

a thought here. We've been looking at the vga path for a few years, in 
the linuxbios project, and in fact precede the current plan 9 learning 
curve on vga by a bit.

In 2001 I wrote the equivalent of the Plan 9 realmode code for 
linuxbios, and put it in; it did pretty much the equivalent of what the 
realmode driver does now, and it worked, but it is really risky at 
times. Why? because the things that those VGA bios guys do are really 
evil. I can tell you stories ... too ugly to discuss in a family 
publication like 9fans. I'm very impressed that it is working so well.

I would ask people to consider looking at what we finally had to do in 
linuxbios, which is to put an x86 emulator. derived from the X11 x86 
emulator, into a driver. This works really well. You can catch evil 
things that the vga bios tries to do, and make them less evil. Also, 
such a driver would go in port/, not pc/. Just a thought.

But, long term, the approach of replacing 9load with plan9 sure makes a 
lot of sense. Is it possible some day that 9fat could go away, and we 
just load a kernel off of fossil? Just wondering.

ron