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mreff555
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 2:46 pm    Post subject: built in kernel command line question Reply with quote

I was reading a bit about the built i kernel command line. I'm actually somewhat confused about it's purpose. It seems like it would be useful if it allowed you to avoid using a boot loader entirely. Is that possible? If I'm not mistaken a system accesses the first sector on /dev/sda first. So unless the kernel resided there it wouldn't work.

I'm really curious what would have to be done to make this work.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mreff555,

To not use a bootloader, you need an EFI BIOS and to make the kernel as an EFI compliant program so the EFI BIOS can load it.

Legacy BIOS does load LBA 0 and pass control to it.
All that is usually here is a better loader, which in turn loads a better still loader, which loads the operating system.
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Hu
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One of the motivations for the kernel built-in command line feature is to support platforms where the bootloader is too limited to pass arguments, but is otherwise capable of loading the kernel. This may be the case on some embedded systems.
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mreff555
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hu wrote:
One of the motivations for the kernel built-in command line feature is to support platforms where the bootloader is too limited to pass arguments, but is otherwise capable of loading the kernel. This may be the case on some embedded systems.


That makes sense. Thanks.
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