Re: Can you MOP boot an install kernel directly?

[Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>]

On 2025-08-05 15:13, Perry Metzger wrote:
> On 8/5/25 00:52, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > On 2025-08-04 19:26, Perry Metzger wrote:
> > > On 8/4/25 12:36, Jason Thorpe wrote:
> > > > > On Aug 4, 2025, at 7:45 AM, Johnny Billquist<bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I'll just top-post to be lazy.
> > > > >
> > > > > First of all, as you know, MOP is the "native" way to netboot DEC 
> > > > > machines from back in the day. And MOP sortof fills the place of 
> > > > > both DHCP and TFTP in one. But it's more targeted for the explicit 
> > > > > need of netbooting and remote management. But in a sense, for 
> > > > > VAXen, it would be great if we had the possibility of getting all 
> > > > > the netbooting though MOP and not need DHCP and TFTP. Not sure if 
> > > > > that is possible, though.
> > > > Can MOP supply the IP address to the system?  If not, you're not 
> > > > goingto be eliminating DHCP (or BOOTP).
> > >
> > > Certainly, but it's nice not to have to load boot blocks that then 
> > > just load the kernel if you can just load the kernel in one step. The 
> > > OS will use dhclient to get its address.
> >
> > I'm starting to suspect you don't understand the full process of the 
> > booting.
>
> I wrote one version of the x86 boot blocks.

Good.

> > The boot block is a really simple piece of code that resides in the 
> > first block(s) of a disk, and the sole purpose of that code is to read 
> > in the /boot image.
>
> We're not talking about disk booting here at all.

Good. Because then there is no boot block involved at all.

  Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
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email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost             ||  Reading murder books
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