241 - Holistic Boot | RFD | Oxide
[rfd75] discusses in detail three boot strategies to be explored, while discounting a fourth in §3.12 referred to as "a strategy of incremental booting". This previously discounted approach is henceforth referred to as Holistic Boot and forms our proposed strategy. In this document we refer to HBS ([rfd20]) as host software that executes prior to architecture-independent illumos code during the boot process, regardless of the number of separate programs performing these functions. The host operating system will perform all necessary initialisation of the hardware resources assigned to it by [rfd88]. The host OS kernel loaded and given control upon entry into the operational power state ("boot") will remain resident and in control of the host. There will be no handoff to a separate production kernel. All bootstrapping functions will be performed only once at boot and will be considered one-way. Reversibility of these operations while in the operating power state ("running") is neither e