Hi,
Interest in initramfs images that make booting from different media
easier has picked up lately, so let's come up with a masterplan to
streamline development a bit.
Background:
Angstrom supports devices that have a relatively small internal storage
capacity making it hard for the end-user to install all the cool stuff
from the feeds. Notable cases: Zaurus colllie and Linksys NSLU2.
Proposed solution:
Have a tiny initramfs with a UI (be it graphical or telnet) to interact
with the user where to boot the rootfs from. Bonus points for
remembering the last choice
Proposed implementation:
Use initramfs-kexecboot-image as initramfs image. To accomplish that:
1) Add support for your device to linux-kexecboot_<version>.bb by
providing a defconfig and adding patches to the recipe.
2) Add support for your device to initramfs-kexecboot_1.0.bb by
supplying appropriate FBANGLE and INPUTDEV
3) Test the resulting kexecboot kernel on your device and report back
to this mailinglist
Todo (in no particular order):
*) Support telnet and/or serial console
*) Support more filesystems to boot from (ext3, ubifs)
*) Remember last option (maybe by putting a magic file in the filesystem)
*) Support nfsboot
Future enhancements:
* fdisk and parted support to initialize one medium from the other
(e.g. have minimal-image on CF, format SD for installation, install
minimal-image, launch installer gui to select packages to install from
the feeds).
I think we should try to have linux-kexecboot working on as many devices
as possible and have the machine mentors make the final call whether to
include it in the release or not. The 2008 release is scheduled for
early december.
Comments/thoughts/suggestions?
regards,
Koen
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