[LinuxBIOS] Crazy idea? LinuxBios+Suspend 2

Adam Talbot talbotx at comcast.net
Mon Dec 11 18:57:52 CET 2006


My 2.6.18 kernel comes off the disk, so filo.  Currently the 2.6.18
kernel need to load, just a little, to set up memory and disk in order
to access the disk and the suspend file.  Also, you must use the same
kernel rev.   But I am thinking much lower.  This perhaps would be best
as a patch to filo, as we will need disk access. Forget the nice way
that suspens2 works, by only pulling the used RAM to the suspend image;
just grab all the ram.   So a call goes out from the OS to Linuxbios
(filo).  From there linuxbios freezes the OS (Stopping the Program
Counter (PC)). At this point linuxbios has free rain of the RAM.  Start
at the beginning of the RAM and spool it off to disk.  We would need a
"suspend" partition.  Once the ram image is on disk, set a suspended
flag in the cmos, for linuxbios on the next boot.   Power the system
off.   On the next boot linuxbios (or filo, depending on where this code
goes) sees the suspended flag in cmos and takes the ram image and puts
it back into memory, then restores the PC and starts it counting again. 

Logical step order.
Freeze system.
Linuxbios takes over and copies ram to disk+ current PC
cmos "suspended" flag is set.
System powers off

System powers on
Linuxbios loads and see the "suspended" flag.
Remove the suspended flag from cmos.
Load the ram image off disk and back into ram, reload the PC
Unfreeze the system.

Now the big problem here is I am just a collage student, which mean I
have learned lots to comp theory and nothing useful.  So I can give you
the theory and hope its a good idea, but I will not be much good past
that.  Is this a workable idea?  
-Adam Talbot


ron minnich wrote:
> On 12/11/06, Adam Talbot <talbotx at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Like always I am looking for a faster boot time.  So an idea came to
>> me.  My current "speed system" loads Linuxbios. Then the 2.6.18 kernel,
>> until it reaches the suspend2 code (www.suspend2.net).  At that point it
>> resumes from the suspend file, hiding out in swap space.  How hard would
>> it be to build in a "suspend to disk" function into linuxbios?
>> http://www.openbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
>>
>
> is your 2.6.18 system loaded in flash or via filo?
>
> It would be nice if suspend2 could dump the image into an elfimage on
> a partition specially set up for, instead of hidden in swap. Then you
> could even load it from filo ... but on fast machines, linux is going
> to go faster than most things; could we load 2.6.18 or whatever in
> flash instead of filo and have it load the magic suspend file?
>
> The problem there is that I thought that the suspend kernel and the
> boot kernel had to be the same kernel; is that true or not?
>
> thanks
>
> ron
>





More information about the coreboot mailing list