From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list linux-mips); Thu, 20 Feb 2003 20:01:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from bisque.propagation.net ([IPv6:::ffff:66.221.142.1]:485 "EHLO bisque.propagation.net") by linux-mips.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 20:01:39 +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 h1KK1Rg14489; Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:01:28 -0600 Message-ID: <3E55342D.6E1D36FF@freehandsystems.com> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:01:49 -0800 From: Tibor Polgar X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mark Salter 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> <3E552CDF.ECD08EEF@freehandsystems.com> <20030220194115.2A21378A6D@deneb.localdomain> 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: 1480 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 > >> 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. > > Not at all. RedBoot can be used to pass a command line to MIPS kernels. It > would be simple to add the passing of a ramdisk address. It already supports > ramdisks from ARM and SH kernels. The original poster wanted a setup where the initrd was NOT part of the kernel, which begs the question of how/where it would be put into flash so something could load/uncompress it. I'd love to have a way to decouple the two so i wouldn't have to recompile the kernel when i change the root image, but still not waste any space in flash. I guess they could be written one after the other and the loader is just given a "load map" of where each one resides. Would this satisfy Krishnakumar's requirements? Tibor