Has anyone considered using Open Firmware [1] as a more capable bootloading system? It appears to have support for a wide range of devices. Due to the efforts of the OLPC developers, the whole software stack is now available under an open source license [2]
Pardon me if this is a silly question, but I have search the archive and found no mention of Open Firmware. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware [2] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Open_Firmware On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 5:02 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Somebody in the thread at some point said: > | Hi Rasmussen: > | i think the kboot can do that. > | http://kboot.sourceforge.net/ > | > | Peter Rasmussen wrote: > |> Hi thomasg, > |> > |> I can see that what I have been able to use is exactly what you > |> intended in your wiki description. > |> > |> So yes, I can boot a system residing on the SDHC card, however the > |> kernel is taken from the NAND image, ie. "your" method :-) > > The way to solve that is to have a small, eg, 8MB FAT partition first, > containing the kernel, with a second ext2 partition in the rest of the > card containing the rootfs. U-boot can succeed to parse the FAT > partition and pull out a kernel image file into memory, boot into that, > rootfs is set for the second partition on kernel commandline. > > |> And that is why I in a different mail mentioned that I would like to > |> have the SDHC-support in u-boot, to boot completely independent > |> systems on a flash-card. > |> With presently the size of max. 8GB for a micro-SDHC, one card is able > |> to hold several systems, so I think such an option is a very good idea. > > SDHC is a disconnected issue, you can do the above on an old non-SDHC > card. I added SDHC support to the U-boot Glamo SD driver, but I guess > you are talking about GTA01. Because of the "flat" nature of U-Boot > stuff, ie, there is no "mmc layer", the driver is responsible to issue > his own MMC/SD commands at the driver layer, so that is where SDHC is > implemented. If someone with GTA01 -- and a debug board ;-) -- wants to > compare the Glamo SD driver in U-Boot and the existing driver, they will > see it won't be a huge job to copy the SDHC support. The differences to > take care about are that it counts blocks now not bytes, and there is a > different canned sequence of SD commands, but the ones that worked here > are in the Glamo driver already. > > |> This is what I have in my previous listing as well, but I would like > |> to emphasize the following, too: > |> > |> "And if u-boot had USB support implemented so that I could upload an > |> image from my desktop Linux straight to the flash-card without having > |> to boot the Neo all the way to a Linux system, that would be really > |> helpful, too." > |> > |> If I could boot up in u-boot and specify what target-partition on the > |> flash-card I want to put a kernel and a rootfs, and then subsequently > |> boot that image, that would be great! > > I think being able to quickly have write access to the SD Card is good, > but I don't think U-Boot has to be or should be part of that picture. > If you change init=/bin/sh and boot again, here you are at a Linux > prompt a few seconds after Linux begins boot... boot to a script instead > like "/etc/startup" that sets up ifconfig and so on and you are > network-capable over the USB in a few seconds after Linux begins boot. > > U-Boot isn't the future. > > - -Andy >
