Re: mkvmlinuz, boot-loaders and powerpc kernels.

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 10:49:05AM +0200, Jens Schmalzing wrote:
> Dear Sven,
> 
> > Jens, in your discussion with Manoj about this, where would the
> > generic-powerpc or whatever script reside ?
> 
> in my proposal, 'generic' or 'official' would be a separate PowerPC
> subarch that
> 
> a) packages the kernel as an uncompressed ELF image file in
>    /boot/vmlinux-<revision>-<flavour> and nothing else,
> 
> b) packages the bootloading glue for pmac, chrp and prep into the
>    directory /usr/lib/kernel-image-<revision>-<flavour>,
> 
> c) takes provisions to apply the correct glue in the postinst.
> 
> Right now, a) and b) are implemented in the debian/rules file of
> kernel-patch-powerpc, by building an intermediate pmac kernel-image
> package, unpacking it, and making the necessary changes.

I don't like it. It introduces an artificial difference between the self
built kernel-images and the official ones.

My idea was to replace each of the loader/loaderdep/loaderdoc, with a
common stuff, calling a script, maybe provided by kernel-package, and
introducing a dependency with loaderdep of the form : quik | yaboot |
mkvmlinuz. This dependency would be on the kernel-image package
directly.

The script would then detect the subarch as usual and call the right
bootloader generator (well, probably nothing for yaboot or quik, not
sure, and the right magic for mkvmlinuz).

But then, maybe using a separate package is best, so we can do the
debconf dialog, and ask the user about its preference, and then have the
script called by the kernel-image postinst consult the debconf database
and act accordyingly. If it was not for the binutils dependency, i would
say that mkvmlinuz fited this role perfeectly, but maybe mkvmlinuz could
spawn a powerpc-bootloader binary package which would handle this, and
carry the dependencies on  quik | yaboot | mkvmlinuz. What do you think ? 

This way, we would just need to replace the loader and co in
kernel-image to point to powerpc-bootloader package, and have all the
rest handled by this powerpc-bootloader package ?

How does that feel ? 

Friendly,

Sven Luther