On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 08:34:51AM -0800, Michael Sokolov wrote:

Tom Rini [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Alright.  But what other magical bits do you need to shove in the
registers?

None, I just have one register (R3, the first one) point to bi_recs.

Okay.

quoted

The wrappers do:
rec = (struct bi_record *)_ALIGN((ulong)zimage_size +
(1<<20)-1,(1<<20));

Does the occult magic know the size?

The booter doesn't know the size. You see, right now the user first loads the
kernel using whatever means s/he wants, then runs my booter. The booter doesn't
currently know the kernel size.

Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't you need to know the size to how much
to shove into memory?

You want to give my users an extra hassle of
stuffing the kernel size in a register before starting my booter so the latter
can know it. Why? What's wrong with the other alternative (my yesterday's
patch) which would keep me happy, keep my users happy, and keep the rest of the
Linux/PPC community happy because it doesn't break anything and is completely
transparent?

Because it's only a slightly less magical location than the current one
(in the wrapper, I don't know where yours puts it).

quoted

Well, the register magic is being deprecated in 2.5, or that's the plan
anyhow.

I've heard a different plan, namely having one (1) register, no "magic", point
to bi_recs. That's what I want.

Well, 'register magic' == 'cmd_line is rA, initrd is rB and rC'.  Sorry
for the confustion.

quoted

Why can't the occult load whatever the 2.5 bi_recs look like
into memory someplace?

Where is that someplace? I don't see how you can come up with anything other
than something tied to aspects of the vmlinux ELF image, which I have already
shown to be not good.

Well, that's the fun part.  No one really like the current magic
location, but no one's come up with a better one.  After reading the
pmac/chrp stuff which shoves the initrd at the end of RAM (we _could_
overwrite our initrds that we place right after the kernel, if we have a
big kernel and low link addresss).  Not that i've tried it yet, it just
poped out at me.

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/