RE: Re: boot NetBSD using u-boot

[Sam Pham <anhmn%yahoo.com@localhost>]

Thank you for your responses.  uboot documentation
misled me to think that stage 2 loader is needed to
boot NetBSD.  I'll try to boot it directly using tftp.
 However, I'll need to configure the kernel for my
eval board first.  Thanks.

Sam


--- Doug Fraser <dwfraser%onebox.com@localhost> wrote:

> We are using a very simple initializer for the
> Marvell bridge then
> bootstrapping NetBSD from FLASH. That minimally
> configured kernel
> just knows about the disk drive, and mounts it,
> loads the real run time
> kernel and that is the end.
> 
> So, the initializer lives in low RAM. The kernel we
> use as the boot
> loader runs in high RAM, and the kernel it loads to
> disk lives in low
> RAM. It works quite well. We also keep a rescue
> kernel in FLASH
> so that if we have disk problems, we can boot the
> rescue kernel and
> do disk and network operations from there. The whole
> thing fits in
> eight Megabytes of FLASH.
> 
> Just a thought....
> 
> -- 
> Douglas Fraser
> dwfraser%onebox.com@localhost
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:     Allen Briggs <briggs%netbsd.org@localhost>
> Sent:     Mon, 3 Oct 2005 17:07:27 -0400
> To:       Sam Pham <anhmn%yahoo.com@localhost>
> Cc:       port-powerpc%netbsd.org@localhost
> Subject:  Re: boot NetBSD using u-boot
> 
> On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 01:48:50PM -0700, Sam Pham
> wrote:
> > I'd like to port NetBSD on the mpc8540eval board,
> > which has u-boot on it.  My understanding is that
> > u-boot needs the stage 2 NetBSD loader to boot
> NetBSD.
> 
> That seems to be what it wants, but you can also
> just download
> kernel code and jump to it ('tftp' and 'go').
> 
> The stage 2 loader usually lives in
> arch/<plat>/stand/...
> and is different for each system because it's kind
> of a
> bridge between the kernel and the host system.  It
> might
> have knowledge of devices and filesystem formats
> that the
> host system's ROM (u-boot, in your case) doesn't.
> 
> It's not clear to me why the 'stage 2 loader' that
> uboot
> expects couldn't be a kernel for development.  A
> stage 2
> loader would be really nice for being able to store
> the
> kernel on, say, a SATA controller on PCI or some
> such,
> but for development, you're probably just
> downloading
> with an ICE or via tftp.
> 
> -allen
> 
> -- 
>                   Use NetBSD! 
> http://www.NetBSD.org/
> 
> 
> 


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