Re: boot server executables vs. execable executables

But I thought brtmac@ksu.ksu.edu said:
> What are the advantages and disadvantages to loading servers via the
> boot server and executing them after the system has booted (such as
> via inittab)? I understand that there are certain servers which have
> to be loaded via boot.lst in order for the system to boot properly.
> Is it the case that only the absolute necessary servers should be
> loaded that way?

Sure ... you need basic device drivers and file systems etc to get
the system up an running. As far as I can tell the main disadvantages
with loading images as boot tasks are they are not demand paged
(i.e. always resident in core), can't share images and can't have BBS
segments (not really sure why). Other than that they're standard images
as far as VSTa is concerned.

> Along these lines it would seem that there should be some sort of
> naming convention to differentiate a server that is linked against
> crt0srv.o and one linked against crt0.o. That way it is obvious where
> something got loaded, and you don't try to put the wrong thing in
> boot.lst and create an unbootable system.

> [ sensible naming ideas omitted ]

It's probably better to try and remove the need for a separate
crt0srv.o and crt0.o. Having said that I'm sure if I can think of
a good way of passing arguments to the boot tasks. (Hmmm, if we
were using ELF we could maybe have the boot loader attach a note
section or segment to the executable ... not really sure).

As an aside, how does the waiting for boot servers to initialise
themselves currently work? I remember someone mentioning this on the
list a little while ago but can't remember the outcome ... Does it
mean boot servers have to coded differently to ordinary servers?
I can't find an instances of this in the server code I've looked
at so far ...

Cheers,

Christopher.
Received on Mon Dec 19 17:57:09 1994