From: roland <for_spam_at_gmx.de>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 19:48:10 +0100

Hi !

What about making "independent" ROLO an Rockbox option, i.e. moving
ROLO out of rockbox code ???
I like the Idea of having a "first stage bootloader" which gives
a menu with different options to choose.
On my PC I use LILO for booting Linux Kernel 2.2, 2.4, 2.5.x....., windows and so on.
This is a good concept - it is convenient and it is easy.

Independent ROLO would start very quickly IMHO ,because there is much less code for being loaded.
The user could comfortably choose between different OSs (Rockbox Version X, CVS daily Build Y,
Original Archos OS Ver. 1.27z ...)
Firmware could all be put into special dir (e.g. ".boot" or already existing ".rockbox") - so it won`t mix up with other stuff.
ROLO could scan that dir and automatically recognise which firmware versions are available.
(could be cached for faster access). It could also read some descriptional information for each
firmware from a separate textfile.

Currently, when I want to boot original Archos Firmware or other Rockbox Version, I need to boot rockbox, browse rootdir and find the appropriate file - this takes some time because I have lots of dirs and files in rootdir

regards
Roland

PS:
Another advantage could be, that this "1st Stage Rolo with boot menu" could do backup/restore of RTC
settings, so every Firmware could have it`s unique set of settings.
Perhaps one could introduce "rolo.conf" (analogous to "lilo.conf") ??
When defining a boot-option, for every "bootimage" an additional set of params could be supplied. (e.g. RTC backup filename) This is especially helpful, if several people share one rockbox and have different "favourite settings".
Received on 2003-01-18