On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 11:56 AM, David Laight wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:48:32PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
>> [ On Friday, September 5, 2003 at 12:21:50 (+0100), David Laight 
>> wrote: ]
>>> Subject: Re: -current bootblocks breaking booting off raid1 root?
>>>
>>> The bootblocks will now boot straight from the raid set (provided the
>>> root filesystem is at the start of it).
>>
>> Just to be clear:  That's on i386 only, right?
>
> The questioner did imply they were using i386...
>
> I'm not sure about others - it sort of depends on the boot procedure, 
> and
> what installboot does.
>
> The alpha bootxx code is very similar to the i386 code, but is 
> exceedingly
> tight on space! so could possibly be changed.
> I don't think any others read the filesystem to get the boot program.

VAX does.  Sparc64 does.  mips does.  alpha does.  In fact, most have
1st and 2nd stage bootstraps where the 2nd is obtained from the 
filesystem.
-- 
Matt Thomas                     email: matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry              www: 
http://3am-software.com/bio/matt/ Cupertino, CA              
disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message.