On 05/02/20 06:58, David Gibson wrote: >> Yes, SLOF is big and slow. petitboot is not petit at all either, and >> has the disadvantage that you have to find a way to run GRUB afterwards. > Well, not usually. Petitboot parses grub configuration itself, which > means that generally from the OS / installer point of view it looks > like grub, even though it's not from the actual bootstrapping point of > view.
Ok, sorry about that. I need to learn a bit more. >> But would a similarly minimal OF implementation (no network, almost no >> interpret so no Forth, device tree built entirely in the host, etc.) be >> just as big and slow? > > So, as actual OF implementations go, SLOF is already pretty minimal > (hence "Slim Line Open Firmware"). If there's no Forth, it's really > not OF any more, just something mimicing some of OF's interfaces. Right, not unlike what you get with vof=on. :) I'm not against at all that idea. I just don't understand what you refer to below as (2). Does petitboot not have the problem because it kexecs the new kernel? Paolo > But the difficulty of SLOF isn't really its bigness or slowness in any > case (the slowness is just an additional irritation). The two big > issues are 1) that it's written in an obscure language and 2) > synchronizing its state with things that require host side > involvement. > > Rewriting a minimal guest side not-OF would partly address (1) (but > there's still the logistical pain of having to build and insert it), > and wouldn't address (2) at all.
