Re: [PATCH] x86 built-in command line

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Mon Jun 12 2006 - 13:17:40 EST


Followup to: <20060612143748.GN24227@xxxxxxxxx>
By author: Matt Mackall <mpm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 10:11:24AM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > Matt Mackall <mpm@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >
> > > This patch allows building in a kernel command line on x86 as is
> > > possible on several other arches.
> >
> > I'm surprised you didn't do the obvious "tiny" changes associated with
> > that. Look at the static array sizes of the command line buffers.
>
> They're not entirely obvious. The saved command line buffer size is
> currently fixed so if we set a default that's larger, we'd like to
> have a compile failure if it's too large.
>
> Next step here is to make the buffer size configurable, which will
> allow people to use command lines longer (or shorter!) than the boot
> protocol allows (256 bytes on x86).
>

The boot protocol 256-byte limitation applies only to protocol version
2.01 or earlier. After that, there is still a 256-byte *KERNEL*
limitation, but it is not a *PROTOCOL* limitation. In other words,
the kernel can, and should be, upgraded; in fact, a gentleman by the
name of Alon Bar-Lev has submitted that patch several times already;
it wasn't accepted because of an unsubstantiated report that it broke
LILO, the veracity of which I think is in serious doubt.

-hpa

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