Touch based Dual Boot Menu

Werner Almesberger werner at openmoko.org
Sat Dec 27 06:27:17 CET 2008


ramsarvan wrote:
> I want to have a boot menu which shows the touch based 
> platform selection options.

You mean you want to have a boot menu (instead of the current u-boot
menu) that uses the touch screen ?

> Is that possible to do?

That would certainly be possible to do, but ... may I suggest that,
if you embark on that mission, that you base your work on Qi ?

More specifically, that you don't actually change the boot loader
but make a small Linux system that does nothing but bring up the
menu and then execute the respective choice with kexec.

An example of such a system is in
http://svn.openmoko.org/developers/werner/fake-calup/
(that's the infrastructure for the work-in-progress GSM firmware
update, so please just ignore everything that says "GSM" or
"Calypso".)

This is a little more work than just hacking a touch screen driver
into u-boot, but it also gives you a lot more flexibility, and you
don't have to duplicate functionality we already have in the kernel.
(E.g., touch screen filtering :-)

Plus, we plan to bury u-boot before long (and dance on its grave),
but a kexec-using solution would remain usable virtually forever.

- Werner



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