"Eric W. Biederman" wrote:
> 
> Tyson D Sawyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > Since I'm working on custom hardware I have the luxury of an 8Meg flash
> > that I can program from Linux using my own utils.  As such, when I build
> > a system, I don't build the kernel with linuxbios.  However, (at least
> > for the version of linuxbios I'm still using) linuxbios Makefiles assume
> > that a kernel is needed for building a full rom image when all I
> > actually want is a 64K block that is only linuxbios.  I have managed by
> > touching a few files that it considers necessary dependencies (but are
> > not ) and by using make on selected targets.  With this I am able to
> > build just linuxbios without a kernel image.
> >
> > I build the kernel image separately.
> >
> > If it doesn't get done before I get updated, I will be submitting
> > patches to allow simple creation of just linuxbios and make building
> > full rom images with kernels optional.
> 
> Currently we still assume there is something there.  But it can
> be an elf image.
> 
> The current workaround is to do:
> USE_ELF_BOOT=1
> payload /dev/null
> 
> And it doesn't try to attach anything.  I think
> a strong argument can be made that you almost always want a payload
> in your romimage so building it all together isn't a bad thing.

Currently I don't have any payload, but that will change when I update
and use elf boot.  I intend to move all my code with the command line
interface for choosing kernel images, filesystems and kernel command
lines out of the core linuxbios code into a standalone
elf executable and then load the kernel from there.

> > I am mentioning this now because Ron's problem above is related in that
> > the linuxbios makefile assumes too great a scope.
> 
> The rules have changed on that one and that is a small problem.  Only the
> make clean target was affected though.  Generating a complete romimage
> is a very reasonable scope.  Especially if we want things to work
> easily.  I would say in most cases the LinuxBIOS makefile is not to
> great in scope but simply poorly abstracted.

I was referring to the assumed scope, not the maximum scope.  The
version I have assumes you will have a kernel and that resulted in
dependencies being in places they didn't belong.
 
> And figuring out what the reasonable varations are is tricky.  But the
> bootloader really is part of our scope.  The current compromise is
> with the payload option feels fairly close.   I'll wait to see
> how it handles your needs.
> 
> An important point also is that you don't have to type make all
> make linuxbios.rom always stops at the correct point.

That is what I do, but there are dependencies that aren't real and are
worked around by creating empty files the meet the depedency
requirements.  ...this may be improved in current versions of linuxbios.

> Eric

Cheers!
Ty

-- 
Tyson D Sawyer                             iRobot Corporation
Senior Systems Engineer                    Military Systems Division
[EMAIL PROTECTED]                         Robots for the Real World
603-532-6900 ext 206                       http://www.irobot.com

Reply via email to