Re: apex-1.3.31 and sercomm flash header

[Marc Singer <elf@buici.com>]

On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 01:12:54AM +0200, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> * Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com> [2006-08-05 01:00]:
> > I thought of putting both APEX and the Linux kernel in one partition
> > and have APEX read the offset of the Linux kernel from the end of
> > the partition but I fear that this won't work either because the
> > partition can probably not be *longer* than 8 blocks either (but I
> > haven't tested this).
> 
> Actually, that seems to work.
> 
> So the idea would be to put the following information in the "Kernel"
> FIS partition starting at 0x60000:
> 
> ----------------------
> Sercomm flash trailer
> ----------------------
> APEX boot loader
> ----------------------
> padding
> ----------------------
> Linux kernel
> ----------------------
> padding
> ----------------------
> APEX environment
> ----------------------
> Offset of Linux kernel
> ----------------------
> 
> RedBoot would then load APEX, APEX could look for the "Kernel" FIS
> partition, read the last 4 bytes and interpret that as the offset of
> the Linux kernel in the "Kernel" FIS partition.  It would then load
> fis://kernel@offset and fis://ramdisk@16 into memory.
> 
> Sound reasonable?  Rod, would this approach be okay for the NSLU2
> project?

I'd like to see if we can have overlapping partitions first.  This
mechanism adds funkiness to the load process that I'd rather avoid.