Big endian working?

Arnd Bergmann
2014-04-09T09:38:45Z

On Wednesday 09 April 2014 12:04:58 Taras Kondratiuk wrote:
>
> > Maybe Nico's zImage change was under atags umbrella by mistake and
> > it really addresses general zImage issue. In this case we need to add
> > this commit to main line. However, I don't think we need to carry
> > CPU_BE8_BOOT_LE option forward, why we just use
> > CONFIG_CPU_BIG_ENDIAN instead. Note in all cases when BE
> > image used loader is always in LE mode. Never seen case
> > otherwise.
>
> That makes sense, but I'm concerned about BE32 systems.
> Do they also have LE bootloaders? I don't remember kernel code which
> switches to BE32. I'd think that switch is done by bootloader or
> ROMcode. Or even BE hardwired in HW. So BE32 bootloader may expect to
> see BE zImage header.
> Maybe instead of CONFIG_CPU_BIG_ENDIAN use CONFIG_CPU_ENDIAN_BE8?

Agreed. CONFIG_CPU_ENDIAN_BE32 basically means ixp4xx. Whatever those
systems do today, I think we should better not change anything
for them. If nobody has complained for the last 10 years, everyone
who cares must have already found a working solution by now.

For BE8, I think we should just try to do the right thing before
we see mass deployments of broken boot loaders.

Arnd