Initrd?

Initrd?

[Patrick Higgins]

Has anyone tried to get the M-Systems driver to work with initrd, enabling
a Disk on Chip to be the root device without (illegally) statically
linking the driver?  Would the bootloader require special knowledge of
Disk on Chip to do this?  I would like to use the free drivers that you
are developing, but I'm afraid they won't be completed in time for my
needs.  Any suggestions?

Patrick



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Re: Initrd?

[Stuart Lynne]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.21.0005101335290.1556-100000@phiggins.transzap.com>,
Patrick Higgins <phiggins@transzap.com> wrote:
>Has anyone tried to get the M-Systems driver to work with initrd, enabling
>a Disk on Chip to be the root device without (illegally) statically

Yes, with small modifications, the existing driver can be made into
a loadable kernel module. And with suitable attention to configuration
details it works fine when used from an INITRD package.

I cannot comment for M-Systems but I believe that they hope to make
this approach available in the future.

If anyone wants a patch to the existing fldrvlnx.c file they can send me
email.

If you want to look at a working system you can check out www.fireplug.net
and see how thinlinux does it. (If the DOC boot disk hasn't migrated to 
the download area you should be able to get one by contacting 
richard@fireplug.net). ThinLinux uses syslinux to boot from a DOS formated
partition on the DOC into a RAM disk. The DOC can then be mounted at any
time for whatever use you want it for.

>linking the driver?  Would the bootloader require special knowledge of
>Disk on Chip to do this?  I would like to use the free drivers that you

I have only use syslinux. It works fine with this approach. 

The patched lilo should work as well (for booting from ext2 filesystems).

Etherboot will not work if a DOC is present (which shouldn't be a problem
for most people). It has the same problem as lilo. 

-- 
                                            __O 
Fireplug - a Lineo company                _-\<,_ 
PGP Fingerprint: 28 E2 A0 15 99 62 9A 00 (_)/ (_) 88 EC A3 EE 2D 1C 15 68
Stuart Lynne <sl@fireplug.net>       www.fireplug.net        604-461-7532


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Re: Initrd?

[David Woodhouse]

phiggins@transzap.com said:
> Has anyone tried to get the M-Systems driver to work with initrd,
> enabling a Disk on Chip to be the root device without (illegally)
> statically linking the driver? 

A reasonable short term solution, but in smaller embedded devices, the 
extra code & data required for the ramdisk and initrd support are quite a 
significant overhead which it would be nice to render unnecessary.

phiggins@transzap.com said:
>  Would the bootloader require special knowledge of Disk on Chip to do
> this?

Not if you still have the M-Systems' firmware in the DiskOnChip, which 
emulates the BIOS disk calls. Which you probably do.

phiggins@transzap.com said:
>  I would like to use the free drivers that you are developing, but I'm
> afraid they won't be completed in time for my needs.  Any suggestions?

Help with the code and/or testing? :) I'm doing my best to arrange matters
so that I get to spend 100% of my time on MTD, but it's taking me a while to
manage that - for some reason, the CEO wants me to spend time on things 
which are immediately relevant to company business :)





--
dwmw2




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Initrd?

[Dvir Oren]

Patrick Higgins writes ("Initrd?"):
> linking the driver?  Would the bootloader require special knowledge of

You'll most likely need to use a modified LILO, so that it will be able
to read the kernel from the flash.  After reading the kernel, I don't
think there will be any problems.

The modified LILO has been published on this list, and is also
part of M-Systems' drivers (though their version is a libc5 lilo v20).

-- 
Dvir Oren               <dviro@lucidvon.com>
Lucid VON Ltd.     <http://www.lucidvon.com>
9 Saloniki St.,        Tel-Aviv       Israel
Tel:  +972 3 644 3038  Fax:  +972 3 644 3039


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