On 01/15/2010 10:47 AM, Zitt Zitterkopf wrote: >> BTW, have you looked at the petitboot bootloader? For >> the most part it is a better choice than kboot. >> It provides essentially all the functionality that >> kboot does, plus more, it is easier to build, and it >> is a currently maintained project. > > I do see some benefit for petitboot with the graphical menu. Ideally we'd need a version which reads each partition looking for multiple /boot kernels and present a method to select each one using a alpha char. Kinda like the old System Commander app. Just FYI, petitboot is setup to receive hot plug events (udev supported, hotplug-2 planned) and dhcp events. It looks on any storage devices for boot menu config files and for any netboot info from dhcp and then adds or removes boot menu items for those dynamically. Petitboot does not look for kernel images it can boot, as you need more than that to boot a kernel (initrd, boot options, etc. are needed), nor does it test for the existence of any images specified in boot config files, as you would potentially need to be looking all over the Internet for them, and waiting for network timeouts, etc. just doesn't make sense. Petitboot just assumes the user keeps the configs in good order. As for the 'one key' selection UI you mention, Petitboot is setup with a client-server architecture. The server deamon is the thing that receives events, looks for config files, parses the files, etc., then it sends the info to the client UI apps. Multilpe UI client apps can register with the server, so you can say have one UI on the display, and several running in telnet sessions. Anyway, petitboot was designed for it to be relatively easy to make a new custom UI app. Your 'one key' selection seems to be just a variation of the existing ncurses menu UI. -Geoff
