Booting from flash

Booting from flash

[David Vrabel]

Hi,

How would I go about getting linux to boot of flash. If I'm using FTL do
I need to make GRUB/LILO understand FTL?  The board I'm using is a
standard PC architecture.

How do all you guys boot?

David Vrabel.



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Re: Booting from flash

[David Woodhouse]

dvrabel@arcom.co.uk said:
>  How would I go about getting linux to boot of flash.

See Jason's stuff in the boot/ directory of my CVS tree. I haven't looked 
at it. Other people are booting off flash quite happily.

> If I'm using FTL do I need to make GRUB/LILO understand FTL?  

Yes. But why are you using FTL? It's patented and you're not permitted to 
use it on non-PCMCIA devices. You should probably be using JFFS instead.

(You'd need to get your bootloader to understand JFFS, too, but keep an eye 
on handhelds.org where that task is fairly high up on the TODO list.)

> The board I'm using is a standard PC architecture.

Wimp.

> How do all you guys boot?

I don't, on a PC. 

--
dwmw2




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Re: Booting from flash

[Kira Brown]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, David Woodhouse wrote:

> > The board I'm using is a standard PC architecture.
> 
> Wimp.

Does the SC4x0 count as a non-standard PC architecture?

kira.



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Re: Booting from flash

[Bjorn Eriksson]

> > > The board I'm using is a standard PC architecture.
> >
> > Wimp.
>
> Does the SC4x0 count as a non-standard PC architecture?

 Sure, if you're booting it using your own boot loader w/o BIOS. <ignore me>


//Björnen



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Re: Booting from flash

[Kira Brown]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Bjorn Eriksson wrote:

> > Does the SC4x0 count as a non-standard PC architecture?
> 
>  Sure, if you're booting it using your own boot loader w/o BIOS. <ignore me>

We write our own BIOSen, is that sufficient?

kira.



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Simplified initrd on flash/ROM.

[Bjorn Eriksson]

 Does anyone know why I'm not allowed to call ioremap() in
i386/kernel/setup.c:setup_arch()? It fails with the message 'kmem_alloc:
NULL ptr (name=unknown)' when __ioremap() calls get_vm_area(size).

 I'm trying to instruct rd.c to read an initrd directly from my ROM which
I've mapped directly above RAM on my hardware. I've got 16MB RAM @ 0-15MB
and 1MB ROM @ 16MB. The actual code is: (BE_EMBEDDED_DEVICE is #defined)

#ifdef CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD
  #if defined(BE_EMBEDDED_DEVICE)
	initrd_start = ioremap(EPROM_start+ROMDISK_start,
EPROM_size-ROMDISK_start); //remap ~ 1MB @ 16MB
	initrd_end = initrd_start+EPROM_size-ROMDISK_start;
  #else
    if (LOADER_TYPE) {
        initrd_start = INITRD_START ? INITRD_START + PAGE_OFFSET : 0;
        initrd_end = initrd_start+INITRD_SIZE;
        if (initrd_end > memory_end) {
            printk("initrd extends beyond end of memory "
                "(0x%08lx > 0x%08lx)\ndisabling initrd\n",
                initrd_end,memory_end);
            initrd_start = 0;
        }
    }
  #endif
#endif

 I'm trying to simplify my initrd set-up a bit. The old code was distinctly
trial n' error using ROM disk - rom.c (O.Xymoron's modified loop.c I've
modified to work in 2.2.x). I'd rather use simple initrd support with gzip
compression.


//Björnen.



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Update: Simplified initrd on flash/ROM.

[Bjorn Eriksson]

>  Does anyone know why I'm not allowed to call ioremap() in
> i386/kernel/setup.c:setup_arch()? It fails with the message 'kmem_alloc:
> NULL ptr (name=unknown)' when __ioremap() calls get_vm_area(size).

 Rudely replying to my self... I obviously didn't research this enough
before posting. The reason seems to be that the slab allocator isn't
initialised yet at this point so the kmalloc() call in get_vm_area() fails.

 I guess I'll have to defer the initialisation till later on in the boot
process.


//Björnen.




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Re: Booting from flash

[David Vrabel]

David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> dvrabel@arcom.co.uk said:
> >  How would I go about getting linux to boot of flash.
> 
> See Jason's stuff in the boot/ directory of my CVS tree. I haven't looked
> at it. Other people are booting off flash quite happily.

Thanks.

> > If I'm using FTL do I need to make GRUB/LILO understand FTL?
> 
> Yes. But why are you using FTL? It's patented and you're not permitted to
> use it on non-PCMCIA devices. You should probably be using JFFS instead.

Woah! This sort of restriction should be listed in the README or website
to prevent dumb people like me from using it by mistake.
 
> (You'd need to get your bootloader to understand JFFS, too, but keep an eye
> on handhelds.org where that task is fairly high up on the TODO list.)
> 
> > The board I'm using is a standard PC architecture.
> 
> Wimp.

Not my fault. I just work here.  In fact I'm just a lowly student
working during summer hence all the clueless questions.
 
David Vrabel



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Re: Booting from flash

[root]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, David Woodhouse wrote:

> >  How would I go about getting linux to boot of flash.
> 
> See Jason's stuff in the boot/ directory of my CVS tree. I haven't looked 
> at it. Other people are booting off flash quite happily.

Since JFFS is working so nice someone really needs to write a version that
can speak JFFS, then you will have a complete solution! 

I have no time though, we are moving offices suddenly :<

Jason



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booting from flash

[Steven Blakeslee]

Is there a simple way to boot embedded linux from flash?  I've been able to
easily compile and execute from RAM but when I try from flash the kernel can
not use the initrd and it panics.
Steven Blakeslee

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Re: booting from flash

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <D73A25AA6E54D511AD74009027B1110F0F30E0@ORION> you wrote:
>
> Is there a simple way to boot embedded linux from flash?  I've been able to
> easily compile and execute from RAM but when I try from flash the kernel can
> not use the initrd and it panics.

It would be helpful to know what board you have, and  which  formware
you're using.

So all I can say is: yes, there is a  simple  way.  Probably  it's  a
two-step  solution.  The first step is installing PPCBoot, the second
step is using the "bootm" command.

Wolfgang Denk

--
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd@denx.de
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
                                                - George Bernard Shaw

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Re: booting from flash

[Dan Malek]

Steven Blakeslee wrote:

> Is there a simple way to boot embedded linux from flash?

Ummm.....board, processor, boot rom, kernel version all would be helpful
to know, as this works on many systems by just flashing the zImage with
attached initrd.......

Thanks.


	-- Dan


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