linuxboot / linuxboot/book

Q: what do I need to keep in mind when writing boot loaders?

Open
#147 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
300
Forks
54
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

People may be used to issues in the domain of boot loaders to be resolved purely because what they are used to has to specifically deal with those issues anyway, by design.
Some issues may (re)occur with kexec with things here and there, such as

- alignment
- relocation
- hardware state

The Linux kernel is mainly designed for serving an OS, rather than a boot environment. We need to keep testing kexec under various conditions to ensure that regressions can be spotted and mitigated.

See for example the history of kexec et al in RISC-V, such as:

- https://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2504.1/03809.html
- https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-riscv/patch/20250326051445.55131-2-ziyao@disroot.org/
- https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAEEQ3wmb37Y6gOn0cC53DMJgQopcD4pf38c83AexFv+Pj7Er3w@mail.gmail.com/

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No file, test, or entry point is named. Start by reviewing the existing LinuxBoot book content on boot loaders and kexec, then read the linked RISC-V discussions for alignment, relocation, and hardware-state concerns. Done requires an agreed scope and documented guidance, but the issue does not define the expected section or acceptance criteria.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
documentation, operating-systems
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.