Re: iMX6 EOMA-68 CPU Card (or rather arguing over what a boot loader should do)

[Bill Gatliff <bgat@billgatliff.com>]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<lkcl@lkcl.net> wrote:
>
>  there is absolutely no reason why this application should not read a
> linux kernel + initrd and execute that instead of u-boot.
>
>  the point i'm making is: the exact same technique could be deployed
> on any other hardware, again making it completely unnecessary to make
> a dog's dinner out of u-boot or pollute the linux kernel itself with
> yet more low-level initialisation.

This.  As in, "what he said".

And if the kernel+initramfs that it loads ends with an optional kexec
and/or pivot_root, then the end user sees the overall experience as
the platform "booting" their kernel from /boot in their filesystem.

What's more, when the end user wants to update their kernel, it's a
simple apt-get just like every other program file in the system.  And
if something goes horribly wrong, they see a super-smart "bootloader"
(the aforementioned kernel+initramfs) doing a wget, multistrap, ssh,
throwing up a web page, or something else intelligent to help them get
things back into line.

b.g.
-- 
Bill Gatliff
bgat@billgatliff.com