On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:11:39PM -0500, Eric Cooper wrote: > I don't have anything against u-boot, and in fact I helped get support > for the DockStar into the current version. > > But the DockStar is a good example of a trend in embedded devices: > things like RAM and flash size are no longer the main constraint, and > access to features (flash filesystems, USB and PCIE devices, etc.) is > more desirable than ever. With no disrespect to the developers there, > I think u-boot is doomed to always playing catch-up with Linux in > these areas.
Probably correct. > Two concrete examples that have inconvenienced me: > > * The USB support is somewhat flaky -- the plug computer mailing lists > are full of threads about which flash drive brands work for booting > and which don't. > > * The ubifs support is read-only, so u-boot can't repair a ubifs > partition after a power failure. That means I can't reliably keep my > kernel in a ubifs root partition, although I'd like to. > > Both of these are non-problems in Linux. Anyway, I'm not out to > convince anyone to "defect" from using u-boot -- I'm just > experimenting with an alternative approach and I'll share what I > learn. Well both make some sense. Certainly USB support is much better in linux, as is networking. Of course I am not sure the kernel can repair the filesystem either, so unless you intend to boot a userspace to do the repair before switching to the desired kernel, I don't see that being solved. The kernel might deal slightly better with an unclean filesystem than u-boot, but maybe not by much. Of course if the filesystem is ever updated in a non backwards compatible way (a few filesystems over the years have done such things) then your boot kernel might stop working (although u-boot very will might do so as well). -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
