[U-Boot-Users] RFC: Booting the Linux/ppc64 kernel without Open Firmware HOWTO (#2)

Pantelis Antoniou
2005-05-19T13:16:32Z

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Ben,
>
> in message <1116478614.918.75.camel@gaston> you wrote:
>
>>And here is a second draft with more infos.
>>
>> Booting the Linux/ppc64 kernel without Open Firmware
>
>
> Thanks a lot for taking the initiative to come to an agreement about
> the kernel boot interface.
>
> I have some concerns about the memory foot print and increased boot
> time that will result from the proposed solution. There are many
> embedded systems where resources are tight and requirements are aven
> tighter. It would be probably a good idea to also ask for feedback
> from these folks - for example by posting your RFC on the celinux-dev
> mailing list.
>
> But my biggest concern is that we should try to come up with a
> solution that has a wider acceptance. Especially from the U-Boot
> point of view it is not exactly nice that each of PowerPC, ARM and
> MIPS use their very own, completely incompatible way of passing in-
> formation from the boot loader to the kernel.
>
> As is, your proposal will add just another incompatible way of doing
> the same thing (of course we will have to stay backward compatible
> with U-Boot to allow booting older kernels, too).
>
>
> Why don't we try to come up with a solution that is acceptable to the
> other architectures as well?
>
> Maybe you want to post the RFC to lkml, or at least to the
> linux-arm-kernel and linux-mips mailing lists?
>

I'm really interested in having this discussion.

I'm forced to maintain my own u-boot based solution for doing this and
I'd be very interested in whatever gets chosen.

IMHO the current mess is considerable, and at this point I wouldn't
really care if the resulting solution is less than optimal, as long
as there is one.

> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>

Regards

Pantelis