[RFE] Netboot of images bigger than 6Mb

Leonardo Rangel lrangel at linux.vnet.ibm.com
Fri Apr 27 22:38:27 EST 2007


Luis,

thanks for sending this patch. I've personally tested it and it works  
fine on major IBM power machines. Does anybody have access to apple or  
pegasos machines to test it?

Leo

Quoting Luis Machado <luisgpm at linux.vnet.ibm.com>:

> Any comments on this?
>
> Regards,
> Luis
> On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 20:50 -0300, Luis Machado wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> This is my first post to the yaboot-devel mailing list.
>>
>> I've been using netboot with POWER machines for a while now and also
>> have been struggling with the problem of having images bigger than 6Mb.
>>
>> As a workaround, i decided to change yaboot a bit to make it download
>> the images in a buffer up high in memory, above 40Mb. In this case we
>> most probably would have a rather large block of free memory, making it
>> possible to download the images. Also it would prevent us from hitting
>> OF.
>>
>> Since the kernel+ramdisk would be too big to fit in the memory area
>> below 40Mb, probably hitting OF, we load the kernel high in memory also.
>>
>> Today the kernel is being loaded at 20Mb. I changed that to 40Mb.
>>
>> I've conducted tests with this configuration on P505's, OpenPower's,
>> JS20's, JS21's and Intellistation machines and they all have worked
>> fine.
>>
>> I would need to test these modifications on Apple hardware as well.
>>
>> Summary of changes:
>>
>> Makefile:
>> - KERNELADDR  = 0x01400000
>> + KERNELADDR  = 0x02800000
>>
>> Load the kernel+ramdisk higher in memory, here we try 40Mb.
>>
>> second/fs_oc.c
>> - #define LOAD_BUFFER_POS     0x600000
>> + #define LOAD_BUFFER_POS     <new_value>
>>
>> - #define LOAD_BUFFER_SIZE    0x600000
>> + #define LOAD_BUFFER_SIZE    <new_value>
>>
>> Change the download buffer size and buffer position in memory. The
>> buffer size could by calculated dynamically based on the amount of data
>> that has been downloaded or set to the limit of available memory above
>> the position we have chosen. I believe the limit is 128Mb.
>>
>> What do you think of this solution? Comments and suggestions are
>> welcome.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Luis
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Yaboot-devel mailing list
>> Yaboot-devel at ozlabs.org
>> https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/yaboot-devel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yaboot-devel mailing list
> Yaboot-devel at ozlabs.org
> https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/yaboot-devel
>






More information about the Yaboot-devel mailing list