On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, Emiel Kollof wrote:

> Well, for oldworld machines, Linux uses BootX. I don't know if the
> booting of either Linux or NetBSD kernels is interchangeable. If that
> were the case it would be quite simple to do.

At present, it's not interchangable.

> Someone else mentioned that yaboot disabled quiesce. Do we really need
> quiesce? If yes, what for? Can't we get at openfirmware through other
> means?

yabout will quiesce (disable) OF. We at present need OF. I have wanted to
make a shim layer for the OF calls so that we could keep a static copy of
the device tree, but I've never done it.

> And no, I'm not volunteering. I don't have the time really. I would if I
> could though.

What's needed is for someone to make versions of all of the OF routines in
the kernel. We definitely need to be able to scan our copy of the node
tree, and to find properties for nodes. If we can do that from the static
tree BootX and yaboot give us, then we're set.

The other bit for hooking things together is to add two entry points to
the kernel, one for if we have OF around (i.e. the one ofwboot uses) and
one for if we don't (the one BootX and yaboot use). This would also help
us with NuBus macs.

Take care,

Bill