Brenden Walker wrote:
I'm new to embedded linux, but been using Gentoo for a long time.. I'd like to
use gentoo embedded of course.
I'm working on a project that will likely be deployed on an ARM processor, the
application will most likely be written in java so I need to be able to create
a bootable ARM *nix image with a JVM installed on it. Our application would
likely reside on writable media, the OS probably RO.
I've setup a Gentoo system for cross dev to arm-unknown-linux-gnu and that all
works. I've setup a seperate root and can emerge packages there.
What I'm stumped on it how to make a bootable disk image. At this time the
plan was to use QEMU to demonstrate the basic process and for use in developing
our application, so a disk image suitable for QEMU is what I'm hoping for.
The concept of bootable disk doesn't really exist. On most ARM HW i've
worked with the way the boot process works is you have a boot loader
(redboot, uboot, etc) that loads the kernel, then the kernel paramaters
tell it how to mount the root FS.
QEMU works kinda the same. QEMU is the boot loader and you tell it the
kernel image name, then pass the kernel args to mount the root for example:
qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -hda sda.img -kernel zImage -append
"root=/dev/sda1 clock=pit"
If your interested in the kernel details theres a general doc in
<linux>/Documentation/arm/Booting
I have an old (kernel 2.6.19) qemu image, based on one somebody on this
list posted a long time ago, that you can boot:
http://karl.hiramoto.org/embedded/qemu-arm.tar.lzma
--karl
