Re: recommended method of netbooting kernel/dtb in u-boot?

2013-04-11 Thread Kumar Gala

On Apr 11, 2013, at 10:44 AM, Chris Friesen wrote:

 
 Hi all,
 
 We've got a powerpc system that uses u-boot.  In our environment on bootup 
 u-boot does a DHCP to get networking info, then uses TFTP to get the kernel, 
 which then does DHCP again and NFS-mounts the initial root filesystem.
 
 What's the standard practice for this sort of thing when using device tree 
 blobs?  Do most people use multi-file images or do they TFTP scripts to load 
 and execute separate kernel/dtb files?
 
 For multi-part images is there an in-kernel way of generating a file 
 containing a kernel and dtb combined?  I saw a patch proposed in 2008 to add 
 a uImage.dt build target but it was shot down because it used the legacy 
 multi-file format.  Is there an equivalent build target that uses the FIT 
 format?


We've normally just done multiple tftp fetches and one grabs dtb and one grabs 
kernel.

- k
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Re: recommended method of netbooting kernel/dtb in u-boot?

2013-04-11 Thread Chris Friesen

On 04/11/2013 12:12 PM, Kumar Gala wrote:


On Apr 11, 2013, at 10:44 AM, Chris Friesen wrote:



Hi all,

We've got a powerpc system that uses u-boot.  In our environment on
bootup u-boot does a DHCP to get networking info, then uses TFTP to
get the kernel, which then does DHCP again and NFS-mounts the
initial root filesystem.

What's the standard practice for this sort of thing when using
device tree blobs?  Do most people use multi-file images or do they
TFTP scripts to load and execute separate kernel/dtb files?


We've normally just done multiple tftp fetches and one grabs dtb and
one grabs kernel.


Do you hardcode the path to the file in the firmware?  Or do you upload 
a script that knows the path to the file?


In our case the path to the boot file(s) depends on which slot the card 
being booted has been inserted in.  The DHCP server knows what the path 
is, so it can set dhcpd.conf appropriately, but we need to get that 
information to the firmware on the card being booted.


Chris
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Re: recommended method of netbooting kernel/dtb in u-boot?

2013-04-11 Thread Ira W. Snyder
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 12:39:00PM -0600, Chris Friesen wrote:
 On 04/11/2013 12:12 PM, Kumar Gala wrote:
 
  On Apr 11, 2013, at 10:44 AM, Chris Friesen wrote:
 
 
  Hi all,
 
  We've got a powerpc system that uses u-boot.  In our environment on
  bootup u-boot does a DHCP to get networking info, then uses TFTP to
  get the kernel, which then does DHCP again and NFS-mounts the
  initial root filesystem.
 
  What's the standard practice for this sort of thing when using
  device tree blobs?  Do most people use multi-file images or do they
  TFTP scripts to load and execute separate kernel/dtb files?
 
  We've normally just done multiple tftp fetches and one grabs dtb and
  one grabs kernel.
 
 Do you hardcode the path to the file in the firmware?  Or do you upload 
 a script that knows the path to the file?
 
 In our case the path to the boot file(s) depends on which slot the card 
 being booted has been inserted in.  The DHCP server knows what the path 
 is, so it can set dhcpd.conf appropriately, but we need to get that 
 information to the firmware on the card being booted.
 

Hello Chris,

I use a hardware setup which sounds similar to yours. The DHCP server
controls which file is sent to each card.

I use the FIT image format to combine a kernel, dtb, and initrd in one
package. Then the U-Boot command dhcp $address sets up the network and
tftp's the filename sent by the DHCP server. You don't need to invoke
the U-Boot command tftp if you only have one image. dhcp is enough.

I used the U-Boot doc/uImage.FIT/*.its examples to get started, and
wrote my own custom .its file for my board. I don't use anything other
than the vmlinux.bin.gz provided by the kernel build.

Hope it helps,
Ira
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Re: recommended method of netbooting kernel/dtb in u-boot?

2013-04-11 Thread Chris Friesen

On 04/11/2013 01:50 PM, Ira W. Snyder wrote:


I use a hardware setup which sounds similar to yours. The DHCP server
controls which file is sent to each card.

I use the FIT image format to combine a kernel, dtb, and initrd in one
package.

snip

I used the U-Boot doc/uImage.FIT/*.its examples to get started, and
wrote my own custom .its file for my board. I don't use anything other
than the vmlinux.bin.gz provided by the kernel build.


Okay, that's a good data point, thanks.

Chris
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