Solaris uses the first argument (and it is essential to the kernel
loading process actually). I've worked around the removal of the
original arg0 string by passing the kernel name twice, ie:
skern=/platform/i86pc/kernel/unix
multiboot $skern $skern ...
--S
On Jan 14, 2010, at 8:53 AM, Grégoire Sutre <gregoire.su...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi,
Vladimir just sent a patch regarding this issue, but I had this long
(sorry!) email almost finished already, so here it is. And this
might give more context for Vladimir's email.
As mentioned in a previous thread, I had some problems getting
multiboot options recognized by the NetBSD kernel, and this was
actually due to the fact that GRUB Legacy implicitly passes the
booted file as first argument whereas GRUB 2 doesn't [1].
I started a thread on NetBSD's port-i386 mailing list [2] on the
format of the multiboot command-line, and the discussion moved
towards the change in GRUB regarding the first argument (booted
kernel in GRUB Legacy, removed in GRUB 2). I ended up doing tests
with Xen, which is also multiboot-compliant, and Xen also skips the
first argument in its command-line parsing code (well, it's a bit
more complex, see [3] for details if you're interested).
In the end, it may be the case that most multiboot-compliant kernels
out there still assume that the first argument is the booted file
name, and skip it without even looking at it. Do you know of any
kernel that does not make this assumption?
There are also other multiboot-compliant boot loaders (e.g. NetBSD's
boot loader). Apart from GRUB 2, do you know of another boot-loader
that does not put the booted file name as first argument?
I understand that the specification does not enforce the boot loader
to follow a specific command-line format. And, in a perfect world,
developers should follow the specification, disregarding any
particular implementation of the specification. But I guess we
don't live in a perfect world ;-)
The reference implementation (GRUB legacy) for the specification led
kernel developers to assume a specific command-line format. And for
the sake of backward compatibility, all multiboot command-lines for
those kernels should contain the booted file name as first
argument. So why not change the specification in this way, i.e.
require that the command-line starts with the booted file name? I
believe that this would merely amount to writing down what most
users of the specification had already in mind...
Grégoire
p.s. I guess that there are not many GRUB developers on the NetBSD
mailing lists, and, for my part, this topic is new... Feel free to
intervene :-)
[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2010-01/msg00146.html
[2] http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2010/01/09/msg001747.html
[3] http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2010/01/14/msg001768.html
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