Re: NSLU2 won't boot 5.0

[Luazi <embedpro%gmail.com@localhost>]

>
>>   One thing I have only played with a little is putting a kernel into
>> flash.
>>  Which is where we really want to go.  I've gotten a bootable, gzipped
>> kernel down to 800 kB or so, but don't know anything about unzipping and
>> sticking it into the right memory location.  I'm interested enough to have
>> a
>> go at it if anybody can point the way.

RedBoot already has support for this. I mean the real RedBoot not the
crippled version that ships with the slug. (I replaced my RedBoot a
few hours after I got the slug so I might have missed something).
Standard redboot commands allow you to burn zipped kernels into flash
and add scripts to automagically unzip the kernel into the correct
location and boot it.

I will briefly describe how I put NetBSD in flash on my slug. This
needs a redboot update as I mentioned before and we are dealing with
flash so be careful.
Because I work with many arm platforms I rename the slug kernel to
nslubsd.bin.gz

lo -r -b 0x200000 nslubsd.bin.gz
fis create NetBSD4 -f 0x50400000 -l 0x00200000 -r 0x00200000 -e 0x00200000

At this point NetBSD is in flash. Using the fconfig command I can save
the following script in flash. When the slug is powered or rebooted
this script runs and boots the kernel.

fis loa -d NetBSD4
go


>
> I think we really need a bootloader... But I'm not sure if any of the
> NetBSD secondary boot loaders can understand USB? Could a small boot
> kernel find USB storage and then boot a kernel from it maybe? I don't
>
I am already using NetBSD as a bootloader. I use a NetBSD kernel in
flash to boot a NetBSD kernel on a SATA hard drive on a DNS323.  It
works for USB disks too!