From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org From: Alexander Larsson Subject: Re: Booting Linux from Flash Date: 15 Apr 1999 18:06:32 +0200 Message-ID: References: <01BE8665.A0E7B070.john.vanloon@oregonchain.com> <37156C34.C1DEE82F@dgs.monash.edu.au> Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: brendan@dgs.monash.edu.au (Brendan Simon) writes: > I would certainly like to get a flash filesystem driver. I'm not sure if it > is the same thing you are talking about. > > I want to boot linux on an powerpc embedded system which has no hard disk. I > do not want to use lilo. I imagine that I would have write a simple > bootloader to get the kernel booting. I want to store the kernel at a known > location in Flash and store a boot image at a known location in Flash. I then > want to execute the kernel somehow (jump to appropriate address) and pass to > it any parameters required to let it place the boot image in a ram disk. I > think the kernel lives in the file system so it's a bit of a chicken and egg > problem as far as I can see. Is the kernel that is booting stored in the boot > image. If so I guess the boot image has to be uncompressed. The root > filesystem can be a compressed image though. The way I'm doing it is i just place the bootcode and a zImage at place in the flash-mem where the machine boots. Then i just set up the machine and copy the zImage down to ram and jump to it. You could probably get it to read a compressed fs image from flash and mount it as a ram-disk by either using some initrd hacking or doing some kernel startup modifications. > Anyone know where I should start with regards to bootloaders or how to get the > kernel booting if I have the kernel and bootimage in Flash somewhere. Note > the Flash is just memory mapped on a SIMM. There is no IDE driver or > filesystem on it. Do I need a Flash device driver ?? No, you don't need a Flash device driver unless you want to write to the flash. / Alex [[ This message was sent via the linuxppc-dev mailing list. Replies are ]] [[ not forced back to the list, so be sure to Cc linuxppc-dev if your ]] [[ reply is of general interest. Please check http://lists.linuxppc.org/ ]] [[ and http://www.linuxppc.org/ for useful information before posting. ]]