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7 Sep 2024 05:11:46 EDT (-0400)
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From: Fredrik Eriksson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 13:53:19
Message: <op.ug0ry5xf7bxctx@e6600>
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:46:19 +0200, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>  The Linux version actually.
>>  http://kerneltrap.org/node/1606
>
> Ah. So there *is* a Linux driver, the guys just dislike closed-source  
> drivers, so they wrote their own?

Presumably, though I do not actually know their motives.

Eventually nVidia started contributing to forcedeth, and a couple of years  
ago they dropped their own driver.


-- 
FE


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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 14:56:02
Message: <48c180c2$1@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem 
>>> like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second 
>>> step of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given 
>>> the wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is 
>>> allowed to be on in Linux.
>>>
>>> How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot 
>>> mechanism to find the files it needs? Is there something special, 
>>> such that (say) copying the file to a different place on the disk 
>>> would keep things from booting?
>>
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Bootstrap-tricks.html
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Images.html
>>
>> I know from experience that moving stuff around on the boot partition 
>> can break GRUB.
> 
> So the location of the real meat is hard-coded into the MBR. Neat...
> 


He beat me to it.

Yes, the MBR's job is only to load the real boot code.


I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what 
calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.

Those are calls that I could have access to to make my own boot junk.

I wish I had more time.....



Tom


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From: Fredrik Eriksson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 15:21:26
Message: <op.ug0v10hh7bxctx@e6600>
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:56:01 +0200, Tom Austin <taustin> wrote:
> I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what  
> calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INT_13#INT_13h_AH.3D02h:_Read_Sectors_From_Drive



-- 
FE


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 16:58:51
Message: <48c19d8b$1@news.povray.org>
>> I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what 
>> calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INT_13#INT_13h_AH.3D02h:_Read_Sectors_From_Drive 

Well, yeah, those are the BIOS calls to read sectors from a disk while 
in real mode. But then, once you've grabbed enough blocks from disk in 
real mode *then* you can worry about entering protected mode and 
initialising a real filesystem driver, etc.

BTW, I believe Grub supports booting *any* OS that complies with a set 
of simple guidelines. It isn't just limited to booting Linux. (Although 
it won't boot Windoze - but it can call the Windoze bootloader 
automatically.)

And yes, *I* wish I had more time...!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: gregjohn
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 18:40:00
Message: <web.48c1b4247002093234d207310@news.povray.org>
Ahem.  So did more than one person try out "some" live CD's and found several
wanting as far as hardware recognition and drivers?!?!!?

Please write up reviews on your blogs! Let the world know!  Linux distros, even
if they are free, are still in a "marketplace" for users.


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 5 Sep 2008 18:41:08
Message: <48c1b584$1@news.povray.org>
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:49:25 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of
>>> friends.
>> 
>> ntfs-3g solves those issues.
> 
> Several programs claim to "solve" these issues - with varying degrees of
> safety warnings. ;-)
> 
> (There are kernel NTFS drivers, there's a gizmo that loads NTFS.SYS from
> your Windoze partition and uses that, there are read-only NTFS drivers,
> and so on and so forth.)

ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.  
I don't know that it comes with a bunch of warnings, but of course using 
closed code with Linux is going to get people to give "warnings" about 
the difficulty in solving problems should they arise.

But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things 
can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.

Either that, or I imagined the gradual corruption on a coworkers machine 
a few weeks ago. :-)

Jim

Jim


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 6 Sep 2008 00:34:02
Message: <48c2083a$1@news.povray.org>
Jim Henderson wrote:
> ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.  

Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to 
laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is 
necessary to understand how something works. :-)

> But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things 
> can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.

What surprises me is that there's anything on the file system that can 
grow without bound. But as I understand it, at least the security 
descriptors (i.e., the ACLs) can get put in a hash table and never 
removed. Seems odd.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 6 Sep 2008 04:26:01
Message: <48c23e99$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:

> Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to 
> laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is 
> necessary to understand how something works. :-)

It's also not necessary to understand how something works just to use it 
s public interface. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 19 Sep 2008 16:54:12
Message: <48d41174$1@news.povray.org>
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:35:16 -0400, gregjohn wrote:

> Ahem.  So did more than one person try out "some" live CD's and found
> several wanting as far as hardware recognition and drivers?!?!!?
> 
> Please write up reviews on your blogs! Let the world know!  Linux
> distros, even if they are free, are still in a "marketplace" for users.

Not sure why you wrote this back to me - I was just commenting that 
ntfs-3g solves the issues with native NTFS solutions in the Linux kernel.

Jim


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Linux & drivers
Date: 19 Sep 2008 16:55:38
Message: <48d411ca$1@news.povray.org>
On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:34:01 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.
> 
> Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to
> laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is
> necessary to understand how something works. :-)

I believe that's how it works - much like how ndiswrapper can be used to 
use Windows WLAN drivers on Linux.

But using a closed-source driver doesn't mean you have any idea how it 
works, just how to interface with it - and that's what reverse 
engineering is for.

>> But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things
>> can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.
> 
> What surprises me is that there's anything on the file system that can
> grow without bound. But as I understand it, at least the security
> descriptors (i.e., the ACLs) can get put in a hash table and never
> removed. Seems odd.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Jim


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