Subject: Re: questions about converting sparc to MI installboot(8)
To: Luke Mewburn <lukem@wasabisystems.com>
From: Paul Kranenburg <pk@cs.few.eur.nl>
List: port-sparc
Date: 05/07/2002 11:00:39
> I've written a sparc backend for the machine independent
> /usr/sbin/installboot, but I have an implementation issue that

Ah! I wish I'd known 24 hours earlier:); I committed one just yesterday
evening..


> The sparc installboot(8) backend (arch/sparc.c) that I've written,
> which is heavily based on arch/sun68k.c, doesn't use loadfile().
> Instead, it expects that /usr/mdec/bootxx is already in a binary
> format (converted with objcopy -O binary), which significantly
> increases the simplicitly and portability of the arch/sparc.c module.

Yes, that's what I planning to do.

> So, the new installboot needs bootxx built with something like:
> 	${PROG}: ${OBJS} ${LIBKERN} ${LIBSA}
> 		${LD} -o ${.TARGET}.sym ${LINKFLAGS} ${OBJS} ${LIBSA} ${LIBKERN}
> 		@${SIZE} ${.TARGET}.sym
> 		${OBJCOPY} -O binary ${.TARGET}.sym ${.TARGET}.bin
> 		(printf ${SUN_MAGIC_HEADER}; cat ${.TARGET}.bin ) > ${.TARGET}

I'm patching in the header in arch/sparc.c currently (like the old
installboot program). I'm also thinking of defining an `-o' option
to accommodate Javastation bootblocks which currently don't grok
the tweaked a.out header.

-pk