Re: HP mv2120 support in Orion tree

[Marc Singer <elf@buici.com>]

On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 12:18:43PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
>  - figure out the best way to make one image that contains the kernel and
>    ramdisk: Marc had some ideas about this.

I've done a quick refresh on initramfs.  It looks like the only way to
get the kernel to auto-load the rootfs without passing initrd_start
address is to link the initramfs into the kernel.  So, either

 1) we relink the kernel image with an initramfs image--may not be too
    terrible--which means we wouldn't have to do anything to the boot
    process or
 2) we see if we can get uboot multi-images to do the trick. or 
 3) we do the normal thing of appending an initrd (of some sort) to
    the kernel, wrap the whole kit into a single uImage, and use a
    kernel shim to fixup the kernel arguments to include ATAGS for the
    ramdisk image.

The real trouble with 1 is that we need the ELF image of the kernel to
do the relink.  I don't see this being available and it looks like the
initramfs is linked into the middle of the kernel, so some shenanigans
with the zImage and the link map are probably out of the question.

It looks like there is multi-image support in the uboot as shipped.
We'll have to test it.  Martin, how could I generate such a rootfs?  I
don't really care if the FS starts the installer.  I just want to see
that the kernel can mount it.