[Angstrom-devel] Tosa (and maybe some others Zaurii) feature.

[Paul Sokolovsky]

Hello Joshua,

Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 6:06:21 PM, you wrote:

[]

>> 2. There's 1st-stage bootloader, with the only purpose of loading a linux
>> kernel from flash to RAM and executing it. As such, this could be
>> really minimal bootloader, with the only other feature possibly being
>> serial tty support for low-level rescue/debugging.
>> 3. For the most practical case, what 1st-stage will load is a
>> kernel+bundled initramfs implementing a 2nd-stage bootloader. This
>> bootloader will provide all the funky UIs, rescues, and most
>> importantly, will kexec the kernel out of real rootfs (be it jffs2,
>> ext2, or whatever), so the kernel undergoes normal package mangement,
>> can be upgraded without all the gore which currently happens on many
>> devices, etc.
>>
>>
>>   
> This is basically the model for h2200/LAB, right?

  Yep, but again, generalized to be as much as possible
machine-independent and using contemporary/mainline standards. So, no
HH.org bootloader, as it is supposedly hard to port to other hardware.
Instead, uboot and APEX look promising. No in-kernel shell, as that's
against Linux kernel evolution, instead there's initramfs and
klibc/uclibc. No armboot syscall, as there's kexec in mainline.

> I am running a version of LAB from well over a year and a half ago (may
> very well be the most recent...) and can use new kernels with no 
> problems - the 11/17 images bumped to 2.6.21-hh8 from hh7, no special 
> install - just decompressed the image.

  Thanks for the report, glad to know that armboot calls still rocks,
while kexec only learns to deal with command-line ;-).

> (anecdotal experience)
> j.



-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                            mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com