initrd problems

[Matt Porter]

On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 05:27:18PM -0500, Sébastien Côté wrote:
>
> I finally figured out a small part of the problem...  My initrd_start
> was overwritten (to 0) by the function start_kernel in init/main.c :

<snip>

> I don't really understand this function... Why would my initrd be
> overwritten?!?  Anyways, I commented it out to see what would happen.

Because it's in the wrong place and the kernel is walking all over
it.  Usually because a bootloader couldn't handle relocating the
image to a safe place.

<snip>

> sb is NULL.  Damn..  What now?  Is it possible that my initrd has been
> erased like the kernel told me?  What else could it be?

Yes.

> I was also wondering if I loaded the kernel correctly.  I put my
> zImage+initrd (zvmlinux.initrd) at address 0 of ram.  Since I compiled
> the kernel with debug symbols, it takes a few Megs... Could it be too
> large for it's own good?  Maybe somebody knows about the answer to that
> one!

What does the bootloader show when it relocates the zImage and initrd?
How about a progress dump so we have something to help you with?  You
make some comments about not using a special bootloader then say
you are loading a zImage (from the Sandpoint port) which does have
a relocating bootloader.  This smells like a custom board port where
you've gutted or dropped a bootloader and don't have the r3-r6 set
up correctly for entry into arch/ppc/kernel/head.S.  Are you really
just dropping vmlinux at address 0?  Details details...

--
Matt Porter
MontaVista Software, Inc.
mporter at mvista.com

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