From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <392EA227.41945656@embeddededge.com> Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 12:11:19 -0400 From: Dan Malek MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Brown, David (dbrown03)" CC: linuxppc-embedded@lists.linuxppc.org Subject: Re: Questions about 8xxrom References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-linuxppc-embedded@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: "Brown, David (dbrown03)" wrote: > > Now, I've gone back to try the ELF method. My flash starts at FF800000, and > the zImage.initrd is stored at the beginning of flash. As I have said many times, and as recently as yesterday, the zImage (especially with initrd) was never intended to be a proper ELF image. It is the most compressed set of bits possible to minimize storage in a device. The ELF header is an artifact of the tools used to create zImage, and should simply be stripped. The zImage is a "self extracting" image that is loaded into ram or flash rom. When you are loading this from a file system or via TFTP, you know the size to load into memory. If you are loading from some medium, like a raw flash card, you have to make some assumptions about the size or tack a few bytes on the front that indicate the length. Most systems have some custom boot loader that requires a special, very small header, or they just jump to the start of the image in flash rom. -- Dan ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/