OESF Portables Forum

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Meanie on September 19, 2006, 09:55:19 am

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Meanie on September 19, 2006, 09:55:19 am

on most linux systems, the kernel is in a file called zimage or bzimage which gets loaded by the boot loader. where is the kernel located on the Zaurus?

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Hrw on September 19, 2006, 10:20:47 am

It is stored in one of flash partitions - no filesystem, just pure data.

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Meanie on September 20, 2006, 02:04:16 am

Quote

It is stored in one of flash partitions - no filesystem, just pure data.
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thanks HRW, that's what I suspected. Is the OZ kernel on C3000 also stored on flash or on the microdrive? I think pdaXrom places it into /dev/mtdblock4. Where does OZ put it? /dev/mtdblock3? since there is no /dev/mtdblock4 on my C3000 using OZ.

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Da_Blitz on September 20, 2006, 03:28:33 am

microdrive with the kernel in the /boot dir

there is however a kernel in flash, what happens is that it boots from flash into an intrd, mounts the MD and then kexecs the kernel

i amy be wrong but thats what it seems to do from all my tinkering

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Hrw on September 20, 2006, 05:54:24 am

Sharp bootloader load kernel from flash (same partition in all PXA models iirc). We cannot change it in easy way.

One way to change it is using kexec to boot other kernel so we would get:
1. sharp bootloader boot kernel from flash
2. our system starts
3. our system use kexec to boot other kernel (taken from filesystem)
4. our kernel boots
5. our system starts again, checks that correct kernel is used
6. system boot into selected environment.

Other way is replacing 2nd stage of bootloader with u-boot (like pdaX beta4 did) - this allow us to keep kernel on jffs2 partition so we can update it from working system without problems. But users have problems with installing u-boot and thats stopped me from using u-boot in OZ.

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: DaemonsGR on September 20, 2006, 06:12:03 pm

Hrw, plz give a try on uboot! Itll be better if we can boot oz,pdax and openbsd(If the dev hack it) easily!(and pass kernel parameters easier)

Thnx
tasos

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Da_Blitz on September 21, 2006, 08:45:24 am

is uboot the evolution of LAB (linux as a bootloader) from handhelds.org?

and is uboot a bootloader like grub/lilo or a linux image dedicated to bootloading other OS's?

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Hrw on September 21, 2006, 09:53:18 am

Da_Blitz: http://u-boot.sourceforge.net/ (http://u-boot.sourceforge.net/)

DaemonGR: I saw too many users failed to install it so I will not go into it.

Title: Where Is The Kernel Stored?
Post by: Meanie on September 22, 2006, 12:11:14 am

Quote

Sharp bootloader load kernel from flash (same partition in all PXA models iirc). We cannot change it in easy way.

One way to change it is using kexec to boot other kernel so we would get:
1. sharp bootloader boot kernel from flash
2. our system starts
3. our system use kexec to boot other kernel (taken from filesystem)
4. our kernel boots
5. our system starts again, checks that correct kernel is used
6. system boot into selected environment.

Other way is replacing 2nd stage of bootloader with u-boot (like pdaX beta4 did) - this allow us to keep kernel on jffs2 partition so we can update it from working system without problems. But users have problems with installing u-boot and thats stopped me from using u-boot in OZ.
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thanks! this is great info. i checked under /boot but it was empty. then I realized that I was using the hentges loop image using altboot so I mounted /dev/hda1 to check /boot there and found a symbolic link zImage which points to zImage -2.6.16

I will try and see if I can boot and run pdaXrom and OpenBSD from altboot  If successful, I will flash OZ/boostrap and have multiple distros wrapped in loop images on the microdrive and/or sd/cf card.