Boot Windows Please!

Adam Talbot talbotx at comcast.net
Thu Jan 27 07:06:01 CET 2005


-Linuxbios Team
I one loud voice you guys said yes. :-)
But I did notice, and you have pointed out, that the linuxbios kernel is
missing some key parts.  OK, the end goal is an embedded car computer. For
that I need so function not offered by the 2.4 kernel.  Suspend-to-disk
(Hibernate for the Windows people).  So I went to
http://www.selenic.com/tiny-about/ and took a look at there 2.6 kernel.  I
will have to patch it to add suspend-to-disk, but that's not hard.  Now what
else do I need to do to turn this kernel into a "linuxbios" kernel??  Do to
size constraints I will be unable to add a fallback image, no great loss. I
am loadding this onto an EPIA-MII with a 512kb SST 39SF040 bios chip.
-Adam Talbot


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald G. Minnich" <rminnich at lanl.gov>
To: "Peter Stuge" <stuge-linuxbios at cdy.org>
Cc: <linuxbios at clustermatic.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: Boot Windows Please!


>
>
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Peter Stuge wrote:
>
> > That's how LinuxBIOS was initially designed.
> >
> > LinuxBIOS in itself is "only" minimal code for initializing a
> > mainboard with peripherals just enough for a Linux kernel to take
> > over and to the rest.
> >
> > LinuxBIOS does not contain a kernel per se.
> >
> > After the initialization, LinuxBIOS jumps to a payload and while
> > there has been discussion about stacking payloads that's currently
> > not in practice.
> >
> > The payload was originally intended to be a Linux kernel stored in
> > flash. Flash ROM grow rate was anticipated optimistically however,
> > today there are not many mainboards that actually have enough flash
> > ROM room for a kernel. 512KB can be seen here-and-there and a few
> > boards come with 1MB. Recent kernels really want that MB, and then
> > you'll only have room for 3-400 KB of initial ramdisk, which could
> > be too small too, depending on the application.
> >
> > So, other payloads are used; the two major ones are FILO and
> > Etherboot. FILE loads a kernel from a filesystem on an IDE device and
> > Etherboot loads a kernel from the network or from a filesystem on an
> > IDE device.
> >
> > If you're using FILO there is no Linux kernel until FILO loads it,
> > and the kernel loaded by FILO (or Etherboot) can absolutely be the
> > one you want to run in your system. Just set it up with the correct
> > root and init commandline so that it can start init.
> >
> > Another option is to chain two kernels after each other, this is
> > useful for loading a system kernel from some place that FILO or
> > Etherboot can not reach, but which a Linux kernel can. Imagine all
> > sorts of "strange" storage ranging from local JFS to "unusual"
> > network systems and beyond. This uses the kexec feature in 2.6,
> > where a kernel can execute another kernel.
> >
> > Hope this helps.
>
> looks like a great FAQ entry to me
>
> ron
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>





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