Booting a board with Redboot

Booting a board with Redboot

[Anders Brogestam]

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. 

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?

Best Regards
Anders

Re: Booting a board with Redboot

[Gary Thomas]

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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