From: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o) Subject: Re: i386 initialization Date: 11 Aug 1993 02:26:34 -0400
From: nuspl@cs.purdue.edu (Joseph Nuspl)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.386bsd.development
Date: 10 Aug 1993 10:56:12 -0500
I am building a loader to be used in an operating systems class.
The loader will load the kernel image from disk, put it into memory,
and start executing.
The loader is being built on top of MS-DOS. DOS is just used to put the
image into memory after that the kernel takes complete control of the
machine DOS was chosen because it would take longer to build a boot disk
for each change that was made to the kernel (i.e. reformatting and rawrite).
FTP to tsx-11.mit.edu, and get the file /pub/linux/dos_utils/bootlin4.zip.
You fill find a program which takes a DOS image of a Linux kernel, and
boots it.
I also encourage you to take pull over a copy of the Linux kernel, and
take a look at the first and second stage bootloading code, since that
is where the Linux kernel enters protected mode, and that seems to be
where you are having trouble.
Also note that it is not necessary to reformat a boot disk for each
change made to the kernel --- and as for rawrite, dd'ing a small image
to a boot floppy is actually quite fast.
- Ted