Openmoko to shift to 2.6.27 kernel ?

[Joel Newkirk]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:29:53 +0100, Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com> wrote:
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> Joel Newkirk wrote:
> 
>> Qi boots like a dream - no kernel messages scrolling by, just turns on
>> backlight on a black screen for about 5 seconds (heartstopper of sorts
> the
>> first time) then the graphical boot progress screen appears.  I'd
>> guesstimate that overall boot time was improved perhaps 15%.
> 
> Great.
> 
>> NOTE for other 'daredevils':  Qi does NOT provide a boot menu. (at least
>> not that I could find, not at this point)  The usual NOR uBoot menu you
> use
> 
> Right Qi's concept is it leaves everything possible to Linux, that
> includes even the video init.  You can use NOR U-Boot on Freerunner to
> do DFU or other U-Boot specific stuff.  Qi has a list of bootable
> devices and currently will try uSD partition 1 for /boot/uImage.bin, if
> that is not working out then it will try the NAND kernel partition.

> Currently 2.6.27 doesn't do mtd properly and blows chunks with these CRC
> errors, didn't find why yet.  But it does work with uSD boot on ext3 OK.

> The red LED thing is what we do on kernel panic... it's panicking
> because it can't mount the jffs2 part because of the CRC errors, then it
> has no rootfs.

> Thanks a lot for trying it and reporting it, you'll get further with uSD
> boot right now.


I finally realized that you meant "boot from uSD-based system", rather than
just "pull the kernel from uSD" - I tried 2.6.27 and 2008.8-update uImage
in /media/card/boot and just got blinking red kernel panic LED.

Now I've successfully booted from uSD with Base Image and 2.6.27. "Linux
om-gta02 2.6.27-andy-tracking_2ffb4cc483642df1-mokodev #12 PREEMPT Sat Oct
11 13:06:05 BST 2008 armv4tl unknown".  (although every other attempt or so
it seems to hang at a blank console with a blinking cursor, not really
mapped that behavior out yet)

Which one way or another goes to highlight that Qi - as it stands now and
from what I understand of the intention for it - will not be usable for a
dual-boot setup.  Not a problem actually, as NOR uBoot will let us achieve
that, and I realize that the common target case will be a user who wants a
smartphone, not a multiboot development platform.  I just realized that the
default behavior of Qi being uSD and the default behavior of uBoot being
NAND means you could place 'primary' on uSD and 'secondary' in NAND, and
booting to secondary is just two-step - NOR boot with aux+power, then power
again to boot.  Don't you love that feeling when things start to click? :) 
Now I have Base/Empty firing up by default, Raster+FSO if I use aux to
invoke NOR Uboot.

j