Well, it has been a while since I've added an entry, so I'll start off with several updates.

• First, I did get the USB install stuff finished and committed to -current. I hope to MFC it in time for 4.1 release. Currently, we have problems with USB keyboards during install as follows:

  • USB keyboards on the x86 arch can't be used in installation because the kernel userconfig only works with AT keyboards. The solution is to make userconfig MI and move it into the loader, which is now a WIP.

  • USB keyboards on the alpha arch should work, except that I haven't enabled USB in the GENERIC kernel yet, and SRM doesn't support a USB keyboard.

• PXE support is now done and committed to both -current and -stable. We used a polling method of reading packets, removing the need for ISR hooks in BTX, so the support for ISR's in BTX was dropped.

• Automagical LBA/EDD support in the bootstrap is still on the todo list.

• I graduated May 13 (11 days ago).

Now that school is over, it's time to start work. I've got a job with BSDi out at the WC office (former home of WC CDROM) and will be starting that in a couple of weeks. I'll be spending most of next week driving across the country to get there. Once I do get there, I still have to find an apartment, and will then turn around and head down to Usenix with the rest of the gang.

In other FBSD news, we now have the latest and greatest version of binutils, including a gas(1) that actually groks 16-bit x86 assembly. As such, I've been on a rampage recently going through and cleaning up all the old 16-bit code in the bootstrap to be actual assembly now w/o faking the arguments or using M4 macros to work around deficiencies.