[U-Boot] Can physical flash initramfs cpio address be given to bootm?

[Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de>]

Dear Brian Hutchinson,

In message <3d1967ab1003171233g5dc9cc20me150066bf64f5db2@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> Can I use the physical flash address of a initramfs with the u-boot
> bootm command?  The kernel doesn't appear to like it .... see below.

As far as U-Boot is concerned: yes, you can.

In my understanding any sane kernel implementation shoul dbe able to
deal with this.

> I'm not sure if the problem I've having is a kernel or u-boot issue.
> I posted on the ARM linux list too so forgive me if you are on both
> lists.

Indeed ARM is one architecture which is well-known for NOT supporting
such a boot mode - for reasons I still fail to understand.

Patches to fix this have been posted several times on the ARM kernel
list - and been rejected because such a feature is "not needed".

> I need a initial ram filesystem and don't want it built into the
> kernel so I've built an external initramfs cpio.gz.

I understand your situation. You have basicly 3 options:

- accept the additional, useless copy of the file system image to RAM
- convince the ARM maintainers that this is a useful feature
- live with out-of-tree patches like this one:
  http://git.denx.de/?p=linux-2.6-denx.git;a=commit;h=4f112fe89c1ca9ad7853304bd93d39aeedbb06f9

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
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Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
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