From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list linux-mips); Thu, 20 Feb 2003 19:30:30 +0000 (GMT) Received: from bisque.propagation.net ([IPv6:::ffff:66.221.142.1]:33760 "EHLO bisque.propagation.net") by linux-mips.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 19:30:29 +0000 Received: from freehandsystems.com (adsl-64-170-127-190.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [64.170.127.190]) by bisque.propagation.net (8.11.6/8.8.5) with ESMTP id h1KJUG527631; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:30:16 -0600 Message-ID: <3E552CDF.ECD08EEF@freehandsystems.com> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:30:39 -0800 From: Tibor Polgar X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Pete Popov CC: krishnakumar@naturesoft.net, linux-mips@linux-mips.org Subject: Re: Ramdisk image on flash. References: <200302201135.09154.krishnakumar@naturesoft.net> <1045765647.30379.262.camel@zeus.mvista.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-Path: X-Envelope-To: <"|/home/ecartis/ecartis -s linux-mips"> (uid 0) X-Orcpt: rfc822;linux-mips@linux-mips.org Original-Recipient: rfc822;linux-mips@linux-mips.org X-archive-position: 1475 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: linux-mips-bounce@linux-mips.org Errors-to: linux-mips-bounce@linux-mips.org X-original-sender: tpolgar@freehandsystems.com Precedence: bulk X-list: linux-mips 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