Re: Updating the installation guide, arm platform support
On Thu, 2014-03-20 at 08:38 +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-03-19 at 20:33 +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > Another system question - the d-i alpha 1 announcement states:
> >
> > > Hardware support changes
> > > ========================
> > > [snip]
> > > * armhf: The armmp flavour has been added; it covers both mx5 and
> > > vexpress.
> >
> > Because of this I was going to list the versatile express as
> > supported platform in the installation guide, but I have stumbled
> > over the fact that it is not listed in the flash-kernel machine
> > database, which makes me wonder about its status. Can anybody
> > shed some light on this?
>
> AFAIU vexpress does not boot via u-boot and has it's own "special"
> firmware. Therefore I don't think flash-kernel support is
> possible/needed.
On booting vexpress...
There is an upstream U-Boot for vexpress when its fitted with an A9x4
CoreTile (pluggable CPU module) and various out-of-tree hacks for other
CoreTiles, but it's best to consider vexpress as 'special' as the vendor
(ARM Ltd) supplies it's own simple custom bootloader with the board and
is promoting UEFI as a the boot-loader of the future. Basically, there
are many constantly evolving variables of possible firmware version and
configurations its best not to try and support any particular one.
However, having the kernel, initrd and dtbs available in an easily
discoverable place in the generated Debian filesystem would be good. For
Linaro file system images (based on Open Embedded, Ubuntu and Android)
we try and put the initrd, zImage and dtbs in the boot partition, so at
least it's fairly simple to point whatever bootloader the user uses at
the right bits, or can find them to put into flash memory or wherever
else they need to go.
--
Tixy
Reply to: