Documentation

[Paul Bone]

I am writing reagarding Grub version 0.93 and the Multiboot
Specification 0.6.93

In the speicification part 3.1.2 it states that:

If bit 16 in the `flags' word is set, then the fields at offsets 8-24 in
the Multiboot header are valid, and the boot loader should use them
instead of the fields in the actual executable header to calculate where
to load the OS image. This information does not need to be provided if
the kernel image is in ELF format, but it must be provided if the images
is in a.out format or in some other format. Compliant boot loaders must
be able to load images that either are in ELF format or contain the load
address information embedded in the Multiboot header; they may also
directly support other executable formats, such as particular a.out
variants, but are not required to.

However this is inconsitant with grub's behaviour.  Grub only used these
extra feilds when I didn't use elf.  and used a flat binary file.  It
didn't work when I used elf.

This is not a big issue, I can easily work arround it.  but it is either
poor documentation or not sticking to your own specifications.  Grub is
good software in all other respects but not adhering to specifications
is poor.


Ragards.

Paul Bone

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