Paul Wise <[email protected]> writes: > On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 1:36 PM Arnd Bergmann wrote: > >> The main question for what would happen with the armel port >> I think is what kernel to ship. When the marvell kernel gets >> retired, the only kernel package left would be the raspberrypi >> variant, and that is a bit silly given that it has its own raspbian >> armhf port that is much more suitable for that specific >> hardware. > > Is installing a bootloader into the kernel partition and then loading > the kernel from the rootfs an option to avoid having to drop kernel > support for armel devices?
It would require a bootloader with support for the SoC and its drivers. For instance, I'm still running Debian on a IOP32x device and the IOP32x is not supported by uboot. One easier option would be to have a small kernel+initramfs using kexec to load a "normal" kernel but even that is not so easy. Moreover, "small kernel" means custom kernel build, which is what a lot of armel owners is possibly already doing, so back to square one. Arnaud
