[OLPC-devel] status with linuxbios and currnet and marcelo's boot code and jordan's kernel

[Christopher Blizzard]

Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> Dan Williams wrote:
> 
>> I believe there are some gzip issues with compressing the initrd in the
>> current images that are posted that we're trying to work out.  Something
>> with cpio not creating the right image format.
> 
> yes, things are kind of fouled up in the initrd/initramfs world. Here is 
> how I am building an initramfs image that works:
> root_dir is an image of a root file system.
> 
> cd root_dir
> find . | cpio --create --format=newc > ../initramfs_data.cpio
> cd ..
> gzip -9 initramfs_data.cpio
> 
> This is working. It is what I used with jordan's 2.6.17 kernel to boot 
> from flash under linuxbios. It finds the sda1 just fine and has no 
> trouble mounting it so it can boot the kernel on the usb key.
> 
> Note this is a compressed cpio image. In some cases, right now, ext2 
> initrd images are not working at all.
> 
> If you can send me the .config you used for that kernel on OLPC (i.e. 
> vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2289_FC6) I would like to try to build jordan's kernel 
> with it. That I know is able to deal with the usb dongle I have.
> 
> Are people really booting this image with qemu? It won't boot for me 
> (same error)

It should be working, but it does break from time to time.

Our long term (weeks, not months) plan is to have our own OLPC kernel 
that includes just what we need.  I believe there's a general plan in 
place that David Zeuthen, David Woodhouse and Dave Jones have agreed to 
so we can have OLPC-specific kernels.  As it stands we see a lot of 
breakage from the Fedora kernels which track _very_ close to the Linus 
kernel.

--Chris