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Re: Booting a board with Redboot
- From: Gary Thomas <gary at mlbassoc dot com>
- To: Anders Brogestam <anders dot brogestam at avegasystems dot com>
- Cc: ecos-devel at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:02:16 -0700
- Subject: Re: Booting a board with Redboot
- References: <1171407217.5481.18.camel@localhost>
Anders Brogestam wrote:
Hi.
I'm new to Redboot and are in the process of setting up a new board
(with a MIPS) that will have Redboot and Linux.
I have managed to get a RAMROM version of RedBoot running on the board,
and can use that with the serial consol (the board has no network
connection).
The questions that I have are:
1. One I have a Linux image on the board, how will Redboot automagically
boot that image? All I can see is commands to do it using the CLI.
Using 'fconfig', you can specify a script of commands to be executed
when RedBoot starts up. These could include a way to load the Linux
kernel and then execute it. This also leaves the possibility (via ^C)
to break into RedBoot for maintenance, etc.
2. The documentation for the "exec" command specifies that the option -b
is used to specify the loaded address of the image (ie to me that
indicates where the image is stored, in flash). The source though gives
that -b is used as argument address...
3. When a Linux image is booted, is it Redboot that copies the Linux
image from flash to RAM or is it up to Linux?
Linux is usually started by loading it [from FLASH] into RAM
via a RedBoot command and then using the 'exec' command. The "-b"
option would be used to tell 'exec' where the image is, although
with recent versions of RedBoot this can mostly be inferred from
the load operation. For example,
RedBoot> fi lo linux
RedBoot> exec
--
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Gary Thomas | Consulting for the
MLB Associates | Embedded world
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