Re: LUA boot loader coming very soon

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:51 AM, Warner Losh <imp_at_bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:45 AM, Kris Moore <kris_at_ixsystems.com> wrote:
>
>> On 02/12/2018 11:31, Warner Losh wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:26 AM, Kris Moore <kris_at_ixsystems.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 02/12/2018 10:27, Warner Losh wrote:
>>> > Greetings,
>>> >
>>> > As you may know, the Lua (http://www.lua.org) boot loader has been in
>>> the
>>> > works for some time. It started out life as a GSoC in 2014 by Pedro
>>> Souza
>>> > mentored by Wojciech A. Koszek. Rui Paulo created a svn project branch
>>> to
>>> > try to integrate it. I rebased that effort into a github branch which
>>> Pedro
>>> > Arthur fixed up. Over the past year, I've been cleaning up the boot
>>> loader
>>> > for other reasons, and found the time was ripe to start integrating
>>> this
>>> > into the tree. However, those integration efforts have taken a while
>>> as my
>>> > day-job work on the boot loader took priority. In the mean time, Ed
>>> Maste
>>> > and the FreeBSD Foundation funded Zakary Nafziger to enhance the
>>> original
>>> > GSoC Lua scripts to bring it closer to parity with the evolution of the
>>> > FORTH menu system since the GSoC project started.
>>> >
>>> > I'm pleased to announce that all these threads of development have
>>> > converged and I'll be pushing the FreeBSD Lua Loader later today. This
>>> > loader uses Lua as its scripting language instead of FORTH. While
>>> > co-existance is planned, the timeline for it is looking to be a few
>>> weeks
>>> > and I didn't want to delay pushing this into the tree for that.
>>> >
>>> > To try the loader, you'll need to build WITHOUT_FORTH=yes and
>>> > WITH_LOADER_LUA=yes. Fortunately, you needn't do a full world to do
>>> this,
>>> > you can do it in src/stand and install the result (be sure to have the
>>> > options for both the build and the install). This will replace your
>>> current
>>> > /boot/loader that is scripted with FORTH to one that's scripted with
>>> Lua.
>>> > It will install the lua scripts in /boot/lua. The boot is scripted with
>>> > /boot/lua/loader.lua instead of /boot/loader.rc. You are strongly
>>> advised
>>> > to create a backup copy of /boot/loader before testing (eg cp
>>> /boot/loader
>>> > /boot/loader_forth), since you'll need to boot that from boot2 if
>>> something
>>> > goes wrong. I've tested it extensively, though, with userboot.so and
>>> it's
>>> > test program, so all the initial kinks of finding the lua scripts, etc
>>> have
>>> > been worked out.
>>> >
>>> > While it's possible to build all the /boot/loader variants with Lua,
>>> I've
>>> > just tested a BIOS booting /boot/loader both with and without menus
>>> > enabled. I've not tested any of the other variants and the
>>> instructions for
>>> > testing some of them may be rather tedious (especially UEFI, if you
>>> want a
>>> > simple path to back out). Since there's not been full convergence
>>> testing,
>>> > you'll almost certainly find bumps in this system. Also, all the
>>> > build-system APIs are likely not yet final.
>>> >
>>> > I put  MFC after a month on the commit. Due to the heroic (dare I say
>>> > almost crazy) work of Kyle Evans on merging all the revs from -current
>>> to
>>> > 11, I'm planning a MFC to 11 after the co-existence issues are hammered
>>> > out. In 11, FORTH will be the default, and Lua will  be built by
>>> default,
>>> > but users will have to do something to use it. 12, both FORTH and Lua
>>> will
>>> > be built and installed, with Lua as default (barring unforeseen
>>> > complications). Once the co-existence stuff goes in, I imagine we'll
>>> make
>>> > the switch to Lua by default shortly after that. In 13, FORTH will be
>>> > removed unless there's a really really compelling case made to keep it.
>>> >
>>> > So please give it a spin and give me any feedback, documentation
>>> updates
>>> > and/or bug fixes. I'm especially interested in reviews from people that
>>> > have embedded Lua in other projects or experts in Lua that can improve
>>> the
>>> > robustness of the menu code.
>>> >
>>> > Warner
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org mailing list
>>> > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current
>>> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe_at_f
>>> reebsd.org"
>>>
>>> Warner & Co,
>>>
>>> Great job all! Been wanting this for years, very excited to see it start
>>> landing :)
>>>
>>> One question, if we switch to Lua loader in TrueOS, do you know if the
>>> ZFS boot-environment menus have been implemented / tested yet?
>>
>>
>> I don't think that they have been implemented yet. I've certainly not
>> tested them.
>>
>> Warner
>>
>> Ok, I'll have to mess about with it. I recall there was some library
>> which created to expose ZFS in limited functionality over to the FORTH
>> code. That's probably a good place to start and see if that still works and
>> Lua can probe the pool for BE information.
>>
>
> OK. There's no such functionality in FORTH in the tree today. However, zfs
> sets a number of env vars that loader.getenv() can get in lua.
>

There's also a 'reloadbe' boot loader command that's independent of
interpreter. Sadly, it's reimplemented three times identically, with a
single comment being the only difference. Now that's something that's ripe
for cleanup...

Warner