Re: Freeze in GRUB Legacy (Was: Re: reiser4 in GRUB)

[Stefanus Du Toit]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 08:08:43PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 02:02:46PM -0400, Stefanus Du Toit wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 07:44:11PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > > GRUB Legacy is frozen for new features.
> > 
> > I'm curious -- do you consider proper support for the multiboot graphics
> > fields a new feature?
> 
> I'm not sure, but this is Okuji who decides =).
> 
> Does GRUB2 have this feature (or bugfix as you call it)?  I really encourage
> you to dedicate this kind of efforts to GRUB2 instead.

I have no idea, I'll have a look at GRUB2.

We're using GRUB (legacy) for a course here right now. We need these
fixes for the course, and it would be nice not to have to maintain a
locally patched version.

Plus, they're all fairly simple fixes. Most of the VBE code is in GRUB
Legacy already since "vbeprobe" and "testvbe" work just fine. It's
rather strange to have almost everything there except for the code that
just looks in the MB header and does the right thing using the existing
functions.

Although, since I'm still waiting for my simple documentation patch to
be applied, perhaps my expectations are too high :).

I think it's unfortunate that you seem to be so eager to drop GRUB
Legacy. I understand that it's not very extensible, but simple fixes
like this should be worth it, as they are easy to apply, fairly
orthogonal, and only improve GRUB. Considering its wide userbase I think
this is certainly worth it -- even if it's going to be replaced in the
longrun.

> > I also have some fixes for the "wd" network driver (part of ns8390.c).
> > But those need some work first. As it stands right now GRUB won't
> > receive a single packet on a wd interface. I'll send this in hopefully
> > later this week.
> 
> Same here.

Does netbooting even work in grub 2? I thought it didn't, but I guess
I should have a look again.

-- 
Stefanus Du Toit <address@hidden>, <address@hidden>
  Computer Graphics Lab, University of Waterloo
  My e-mail may be flaky over the next little while. If you're having
  trouble getting through to me, e-mail address@hidden