How to port ppc-linux to new custom boards? (virtexII)

[Patrick Huesmann]

Hi,

> > Thank you very much. This is exactly the type of info I'm looking for.
> > Did you manage to get a self-decompressing zImage, or is this ALWAYS the
> > bootloader's job on ppc-linux?
> I guess in my case (U-Boot) it is the job of the bootloader.
> May be you have to add the decompressing code to your bootloader.
> This seems to be not so complicated for the code is available.
> Download the U-Boot sources and look for the function gunzip() within
> common/cmd_bootm.c

In the meantime, I managed to build a self-decompressing zImage. It is
fairly easy, the board type has to be added to the arch/ppc/boot/simple
Makefile and the zImage is then generated by using dd to strip the ELF
headers off the zvmlinux file. (There are already examples for this in the
Makefile).

BTW: The zImage is *MANDATORY* if there is no standard bootloader used,
because embed_config() sets up the board info structure and sets up some
essential magic cache stuff. I spent a few days just messing around,
wondering why I got strange errors and unreproducable behaviour. Eventually,
I found out that the cache was b0rken because I didn't do the initial cache
setup thing ;)

Thanks again to all folks who replied to my thread,
Patrick


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