[parisc-linux] Creating a bootable image.

[Alex deVries]

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Philipp Rumpf wrote:

> > I'm mailing this because I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing is correct.
> Neither am I, but arch/parisc/hp/boot/README seems to say something different.

That file is actually from Jason Eckhardt's boot loader.  How do you think
it's incorrect?

> > The way I understand it, the kernel we cross compile on Linux is in fact
> > a broken ELF32 file, which doesn't really matter, because at this point we
> > don't need the kernel to have any loader information itself. 
> 
> I think we should build a binary image of the kernel (that is not ELF) like
> we do for x86.

You're right, raw binary should work just fine.

> > However, to actually boot you need IPL, which requires SOM linking, so
> > that much must be done on HPUX.
> This I do not understand. According to arch/parisc/hp/boot/README, the IPL is
> stored in a special binary format which we could generate from ELF like we
> do for the kernel image.

Hm.  Okay then.  So what we need to do is fix the cross compiling of
mkipl.  I'll have a look at this.

> > and it'll create a kernel and boot header that should just boot right
> > away.  That way to do kernel work (and not bootstrap work), you don't need
> > HPUX at all.
> I think the vast majority of parisc boxes runs HP-UX at the moment so it
> probably would not be a big win.

Being able to cross compile really is a big win.  There's a lot of people
with slower 700 series boxes.  Also, building and booting is a lot easier
if you can xcompile on your PIII.  Booting into HPUX is pretty slow.

- Alex