how do you start your OS

[GLneo]

just felt like asking, and becouse there hasn't been a poll sence before i can remember

[Tora OS]

well back when i worked on the K OS project and had no clue what i was doing i made my own custom boot loader which sucked.


Now on my Tora OS project ive been using GRUB. Makes things a wee tad easier.

[FlashBurn]

I use my own bootloader (with 2nd stage) because I started with a bootloader for iso9660 and GRUB doesn?t support it. Another point is that I use a binary file for my kernel.

[Kemp]

I chose custom with 2nd stage, but it's really a three stage loader. Though with some of the things I'm going to put in the third stage it should probably be dubbed the kernel's 0th stage, lol

[Warrior]

GRUB.

[Brendan]

Hi,

I voted for "other" as I've got a 4 stage boot, where the first stage can be GRUB or a custom boot loader...

The basic idea is that the second stage is loaded at a fixed location and started in real mode (with the remainder of a boot image loaded at another fixed location). For GRUB there's an extra step - juggling things in memory and switching from protected mode back to real mode.

The boot sequence is:

- GRUB + post-GRUB fixups, or a native boot loader (DOS utility, boot sector)
- 16 bit setup/detection code, which may run seperate/optional boot menu code
- 32 bit (or eventually 64 bit) setup code (setup and enable paging)
- 32 bit (or eventually 64 bit) kernel setup driver (initialize the micro-kernel and kernel modules)
- a kernel (one of N, auto-selected from detected features)


Cheers,

Brendan

[Solar]

Voted "GRUB" for my past project, will do custom 2-stage boot for my new approach, with the kernel binary itself capable of being GRUB-loaded as an alternative. (I.e., kernel.bin loaded either by custom code or GRUB, with the custom code being done for learning about such things and having full control over the machine for early debug.)

[Neo]

I intially started out with a custom first and second stage bootloader (was pretty good actually ).
However I have been laying of the implementation stuff for a while now and soaking in the theory. When I do start out the next time I will try to use GRUB as a bootloader though.

[Dex4u]

I use "bootprog" as i like to keep things simple ;D .

[Xardfir]

I use GRUB because it's generic and has been tested on a lot more platforms than I have access to.

[distantvoices]

GRUB

until middle of 2003 I've used my own custom boot loader, but then the kernel grew bigger and bigger and I approached Hassles and edges I didn't want to cope with anymore so I switched over - as of now, BlueIllusion boots happily with grub - be it from floppy be it from CDROM.

[Solar]

Actually, I changed my mind when I saw what a mess they are still making with GRUB 2. Killing off a perfectly good product in pre-1.0, redubbing it "legacy", lots of talks about changing the Multiboot specs...

New plan is to do YACL. Yet another chain-loaded OS. Bootsector for selecting boot partition, partition boot sector for locating and loading the kernel binary from filesystem.

A nice bonus is that you could still install GRUB and have it chainload my stage 2 code from the filesystem, instead of having to install it in the partition boot sector.