loading cramfs initrd at startup

[Ben Dooks <ben-linux@fluff.org>]

I am looking at a customer who's system loads an cramfs initrd
from /dev/mtdblock1 (NAND) via a hack that makes mtdblock map
out bad blocks so that the initrd loader does not see errors
during the load.

I was wondering if anyone had any comments about a better way
to do this without patching up drivers/mtd/mtdblock.c?

My initial thoughts are:

1) Add a configuration option to make mtdblock remove any defects
   from a specified parititon (fromalise the hack)

2) Add new block device, possibly named mtdcont which provides an
   read-only interface and a similar function to mtdblock but
   mapping out the defects.

3) Change the initrd loader to understand the block layout of the
   system and skip bad blocks during loading.

-- 
Ben (ben@fluff.org, http://www.fluff.org/)

  'a smiley only costs 4 bytes'