> -- Building the flash image is too platform-specific. For Edimax
> routers, you need to add the header, for other platforms you might
> not need it, or do something else. Also The Edimax makefiles always
> assume there's always a JFFS or Squashfs partition, while in my case
> there should be none.
But that's a "solved problem" for OpenWRT. And the need/desire to use
a USB-rootfs is orthogonal to this (such a need might show up on
all kinds of systems).
> so, with these considerations, a separate profile for a Edimax-like
> router with USB rootfs is the thing that could be done with little
> blood (still, I require few updates in the core makefiles).
You may want to take a look at how it's done for the WL-700gE, which
only has 2MB of flash, but which comes with an IDE disk: basically,
a stripped-down version of OpenWRT is built (stripped down, but
"normal": it comes with a kernel and a squashfs root), but instead of
layering a jffs2 filesystem above the squashfs filesystem, the boo
scripts just switch to the IDE-root instead, so the squashfs basically
acts as an initrd.
This requires much smaller changes to the scripts and can be made to
work for pretty much any system (the main issue is to find the rootfs
device, which (in the case of USB) may require waiting for it).
Also if the root device is not found, the script can continue the boot
using squashfs and provide a useful fallback.
OTOH, this does require a flash image that includes more than just
a kernel, so it does require more flash space.
Stefan
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