[Angstrom-distro-users] initramfs images HOWTO

[Ildar Mulyukov]

	Hi!

I spent some time to make angstrom up on my iPaq h3970. Now I want to  
share my experience with the community.

0. Premise. I wanted to install the brand new The Ångström  
Distribution. I decided to start with the stable 2007.12 version. As  
I'm a Familiar Linux user for a few years already, first thing I did  
was to pull JFFS2 image and flash it to the internal flash. Heh! It  
doesn't boot. I strongly doubt anyone got it booting on his h39xx.
For the protocol: as it's very unadvised to flash the internal flash,  
then the JFFS2 image in Download area is EVIL. If someone is really  
experienced to have it worked, then he must be able to mkfs.jffs2 on  
his own.

1. Good news! The new
zImage-initramfs-bootmenu-image-h3900-2.6.21-hh20-r14-h3900.bin
was a really good assistance after fruitless hours of guessing "root="  
string. Though it's not as easy, as should be, but Thanks!

2. The HOWTO.
a. First, you need to put the kernel to the media, where your bootldr  
may see it. In my case (h3970) it's the CF or the internal flash. The  
filesystem must be JFFS2 or FAT. Depending on your hardware model and  
bootldr: media and filesystem sets may vary.

Generally, bootldr expects to see:
/boot/zImage - the kernel
/boot/params - booting params.

b. params file contains parameters, that bootldr understands. For the  
initramfs images those should be:
* if you want the input be taken from the joypad on your PDA:
	set linuxargs "rootdelay=0 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0"
Note: no root= in the line gives you boot-time menu to choose the "/"  
filesystem.
* if you want the input be taken from the terminal connected via serial  
line:
	set linuxargs "rootdelay=0 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200"

If you want to play with params before boot, you can do it in bootldr  
using a terminal connected via serial line. Type help in bootldr for  
details. And see bootldr basic instructions there:  
http://familiar.handhelds.org/releases/v0.8.4/install/install-serial.html

c. If you want to use some external sources, it's worth to increase the  
rootdelay. rootdelay=1 is enough for my SD/MMC controller to initialize  
and find a flash card inserted.

Warning: The 2.6.21-hh20-r14 is not ready to work with root on SD/MMC,  
at least on h39xx. I will describe the problem and how I overcame them  
in the next letter.

I hope that the initramfs image will be cleaned out of bugs and be  
useful without any HOWTOs. (Still IMHO this HOWTO worth to put on the  
WIKI)

That's all for now.
Best regards, Ildar
-- 
Ildar  Mulyukov,  free SW designer/programmer
================================================
email: ildar at users.sourceforge.net
home: http://tuganger.narod.ru/
ALT Linux Sisyphus
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