[Coco] Where are the separate bootfiles?

[Mark Marlette]

At 04:59 AM 12/27/2003 -0500, you wrote:

All,

Even though Gene has provided a utility, IMHO it is not needed. The disk 
script builds the kernel track on one line from the script file in the 
distribution. Why have multiple copies of the same file if you use the 
utility? Extract what is already on the disk images? Don't make it harder 
than it is. One line, can't get much easier than that. Get use to the 
scripts and the format of the distribution. They are REALLY easy once you 
break yourself of all the bad habits of days past.

Mark
Cloud-9


>On Saturday 27 December 2003 03:18, Mark Marlette wrote:
> >At 05:00 PM 12/26/2003 -0800, you wrote:
> >
> >Paul,
> >
> >If I understand this question......
> >
> >They are in the .dsk image file. The scripts build the kernel track.
> >
> >????????
> >
> >The distribution is very well structured.....?????
> >
> >Regards,
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >>Boisy (or whomever),
> >>
> >>I'm looking to fine the bootfiles (track-34)
> >>on the www.nitros9.org site. How do
> >>I find those separate files? (path?)
> >>Specifically, I want "Kernel".
> >>
> >>Thanks,
> >>Paul
> >>
>Paul;  If I understand you, and even though the pieces are there on
>disk2's image to make a new kernel track, I get the impression you
>want the kernel track from disk1, right?
>
>I have published a utility called kernel2dir if I recall the name
>correctly.  Maybe krnl2dir?
>
>It will build a directory entry that points to the kernel track, which
>in turn will allow that track to be copied to another disk, but as a
>normal file.  Or one can cd to an empty directory and use "vfy -sk
>path2file" to split it up into its 5 component parts, which are:
>
>1: The 6 byte header required by rsdos when it loads and execs a
>binary file
>
>2: rel, the util that copies the kernel track to its proper location
>in memory, and which once done, jumps (IIRC) to the boot module to
>load the os9boot file.  If my IIRC is wrong, and it jumps first to
>os9p1, then once os9p1 has set things up it returns to rel or jumps
>to boot.
>
>3: the boot module, which interrogates LSN0 of the designated disk to
>get the location and length of the os9boot file and loads it.
>
>4: os9p1, now kernelp1, which sets up a boatload of variables and
>jumps to os9p2(kernelp2 now) which completes the system init,
>including a search for os9p3, a seperate module that looks up any
>error numbers in the errno file on the disk.
>
>5: a table of jump addresses that lives past the end of kernelp1, and
>which normally occupy the top few bytes of system memory.  These are
>the addresses the hardware jumps to when one of the hardware
>interrupts or SWI's is executed among other things.
>
>vfy works that way as it looks for the 87cd header of a module, and
>gets the module size from that modules header.  If it hasn't
>triggered an 87cd as it reads the files first integer, then it puts
>that into a kernelhead file, ditto for the next 2 integers.  On the
>next read it finds rel's 87cd and starts to write that module out.
>This continues until it has reached the end of os9p1.  But it has not
>reached the end of the file at that point so it writes the remaining
>few bytes as a file called kerneltail.
>
>To rebuild a kernel track for the new os9gen to use, all 5 of these
>files must be merged back into one 4608 byte long kernel track in the
>proper order.  Its the boot module that gets patched to control which
>device the booting is actually done from.  This is required because
>there is not, at that point in the bootup, knowledge of a valid
>filesystem, so its all by absolute addresses direct to the disk
>controller chip.
>
>I found this krnl2dir to be a very handy tool many years ago when
>nitro9 was going through its genesis.
>
>Does this explain it adequately?
>
>--
>Cheers, Gene
>AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
>Athlon1600XP at 1400mhz  512M
>99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
>Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
>by Gene Heskett are:
>Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
>
>
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