Subject: Re: Boot question
To: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis@mcmanis.com>
From: Simon Burge <simonb@netbsd.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 04/11/2000 16:35:14
Chuck McManis wrote:

> One of the things that is really annoying about this code is that it 
> doesn't use well known RPC code, instead it tries to manufacture mount and 
> NFS packets "on-the-fly" as it were and send those out on the network.
> 
> My question is what is the root of this strange design? I'm probably going 
> to write a small and verifiable set of RPC functions into libsa that are 
> both portable and readable (I've worked on RPC in the past) and they should 
> do things in a somewhat more predictable way. If nothing else it will help 
> me understand the problem.

The libsa code is designed to be small - a lot of bootstrap routines
either have to fit in 7.5kB boot blocks or 16kB or 32kB EPROMS on NICs.
Admittedly the 7.5kB limit shouldn't affect network booting (as that is
purely a disk issue on some ports)...  If you can write a _small_ and
and verifiable set of RPC functions, then I'd say there's every chance
that they will be integrated into libsa.

Simon.