Re: Ramdisk image on flash.

[Tibor Polgar <tpolgar@freehandsystems.com>]

Pete Popov wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 22:05, Krishnakumar. R wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is there any way that I can keep
> > a ramdisk image (containing the root filesystem)
> > in a flash device and boot to it.
> 
> Yes, and other architectures have support for passing arguments to the
> kernel that tell it where the ramdisk is. I don't know that we've done
> that for MIPS, yet.  It wouldn't be too hard to do and maybe someone on
> this list is already working on it (I think someone actually is working
> on it and was preparing a patch for Ralf).

For having separate initrd and kernel load we also need an aware bootloader
that knows where to find the ramdisk.   RedBoot, from what i read, seems to be
i386 specific.    The Yamon i've patched "COULD" be made to do it.   

> 
> > The ramdisk should be separate from the kernel image.

How is this currently done in non-mips archs?   I know lilo and Druid can do
this with a configuration file and hard sector addressing into a filesystem,
but i never understood how they avoid/get around file fragmentation issues.

Tibor