coffboot?

coffboot?

[Lou Rickard]

I've been given the task of developing on an embedded
ppc device called an ipengine.  One of the things I'm
supposed to do is use to update the kernel, from 2.2
which comes with the build environment, to 2.4.

I've been pretty unsuccsessful so far.  I can build a
zImage.gz file, include it in the ramdisk, load, start
it, but when it comes to the point where it
uncompresses the kernel, it hiccups back to the start
point.

For the build environment that comes with it, the
kernel used is in the coffboot directory, which I
don't understand.  As I understand it, coffboot would
be used for making boot floppies, right?  So is there
a difference between a zImage built "normally" and one
that would be built for coffboot?  What would I need
to do to get my 2.4 kernel converted over to the
format used by the 2.2 coffboot kernel?

Thank you,

~lr


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Re: coffboot?

[Dan Malek]

Lou Rickard wrote:

> I've been given the task of developing on an embedded
> ppc device called an ipengine.

You mean the Bright Star Engineering IP-Engine?  Or is
this something else with the same name?

	-- Dan


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Re: coffboot?

[Lou Rickard]

Yeah, the Bright Star Engineering IP-Engine.

When I build the kernel from the bse development kit,
which has the 2.2 kernel, I see that a zImage file
(well, zImage is a sym. link to another file called
zvmlinux) gets built in the boot directory, and so
does zImage.gz in the coffboot directory.

The version in the coffboot directory works (when
built into the ramdisk image) works, the other one
(using the real file, not the symbolic link) doesn't.

When I build the kernel from my 2.4 directory, I end
up with a zImage.gz in the boot/images directory, but
it doesn't work.

I'm guessing there's something I've got to do to
convert the zImage.gz in my 2.4 boot/images directory
to coffboot format, but I don't know what that is, and
can't see how they do it in the bse dev kit.

~lr

--- Dan Malek <dan@embeddededge.com> wrote:
> You mean the Bright Star Engineering IP-Engine?  Or
> is
> this something else with the same name?


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Re: coffboot?

[Dan Malek]

Lou Rickard wrote:

> When I build the kernel from my 2.4 directory, I end
> up with a zImage.gz in the boot/images directory, but
> it doesn't work.

That file certainly won't boot, it's an intermedia file
that is left over from the build process.

> I'm guessing there's something I've got to do to
> convert the zImage.gz in my 2.4 boot/images directory

You can do one of two things.  Load the zImage.elf as
a binary to some address (say 400000) and start at the
code past the ELF header (g 410000).

Second, you can 'objcopy -O binary zImage.elf zImage.bin',
then load the zImage.bin (say 400000), then jump to the
address where it was loaded (g 400000).


	-- Dan


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Re: coffboot?

[Lou Rickard]

Hi,

I tried, this, but was not successful, and am probably
just not understanding what you're telling me.

I tried loading the zImage file directly into ram
(load zImage 200000), and started after the ELF header
(at 210000), but it failed.

Were you intending that I modify the bootlo.bin file
to point deeper into the zImage to bypass the ELF
header?  Or something different?

I then tried using objcopy, but that didn't work
either, and I'm not really sure what it was supposed
to do, so probably I did it wrong.  'objcopy -O binary
zImage zImage.bin' generates a zImage.bin file that
is, or seems, way too small.  The zImage file is
almost 500KB, the output file is about 21KB.  So, I'm
doing something wrong, and I'm don't have a strong
feel for what the objcopy was supposed to do (I read
the man page, but still didn't get it).

Thanks,

~lr

--- Dan Malek <dan@embeddededge.com> wrote:
> You can do one of two things.  Load the zImage.elf
> as
> a binary to some address (say 400000) and start at
> the
> code past the ELF header (g 410000).
>
> Second, you can 'objcopy -O binary zImage.elf
> zImage.bin',
> then load the zImage.bin (say 400000), then jump to
> the
> address where it was loaded (g 400000).


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