Re: loading a compressed ramdisk image
> > That's the bootloader's job on PPC. With a sane OF implementation, your
> > boot loader would be yaboot and something like initrd=<of-path to
> > ramdisk> and append="root=/dev/ram" should do.
> >
> Is this functionality missing from the PPC or is it just convention to
> let the bootloader handle this?
Convention. You sure can compile in something to initialize the command
line in the kernel but most people prefer to keep that in the bootstrap
(which isn't as limited as on Intel in size).
> My problem with having the bootloader do this is that we're writing our
> own bootloader and I don't want to make it any more complex than it has
> to be.
Your call. You can hardcode the command line and ramdisk path in the
loader as well. The loader needs to know where to find the ramdisk anyway,
right? (The kernel cannot load the ramdisk from some other storage BTW.)
Or it can be made to always pass root=/dev/ram as command line if
all you'll ever do is use a ramdisk as root filesystem. Making a rdev
equivalent for PPC cannot be that tough either, it just hasn't been done
because no one thought it useful.
Michael
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