About loader(8) forth

[donxc]

Matteo Riondato <matteo at freebsd.org> wrote:
 >         I'm trying to understand how the loader forth works to see if 
it's
 > possible to develop something similar to knoppix boot menu and use it
 > for FreeSBIE.
 > Just to have a try, I replaced /boot/beastie.4th with file a
 > containing only:
 >
 > ." Welcome to FreeSBIE"
 > exit


Oliver Fromme wrote:
 >I've modified FreeBSD's standard beastie.4th in the past to
 >implement various things, although I'm not that much of a
 >FICL expert either ...   But since nobody else replied, I
 >give it a try.

No expert here either but I will add a little.

 >I think putting "exit" directly into beastie.4th (which is
 >included by loader.rc) is not a good idea.  You should use
 >"exit" only within a function that you define in beastie.4th
 >and then call that function from loader.rc, just like the
 >standard files do.

Or from loader.conf.

For Matteo's simple experiment, ( display the FreeSBIE prompt
then exit to the loader prompt), the exit function is already
built in to the first test of the "beastie-start" definition in the
beastie.4th file. It can be called by adding line to loader.conf as follows:
beastie_disable="YES"

Then, FreeSBIE prompt, .( Welcome to FreeSBIE) can be added to loader.rc
the line after the " start " line.

If you replace the original beastie.4th and loader.rc (with the prompt 
added)files,
you should have that part of your project behind you.

Good luck on the knoppix menu, I have never seen it.

 >If you're looking for documentation, please have a look at
 >http://ficl.sf.net/ which also has links to several FORTH
 >primers and tutorials.  Indeed the first of the links points
 >to a tutorial by J.V.Noble which is easy to read and quite
 >good.

Nice link, thanks.

Regards,

Don Creel