Bypass u-boot?

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1

Hi, everyone,

Is it possible to entirely bypass u-boot and directly boot linux
kernel from x-loader? I tried copying uImage to u-boot.bin but it
didn't seem to work. The kernel is supposed to take care of everything
(initializing devices) once it's loaded into memory and program
counter passed to it, right? Has anyone tried booting without u-boot?

Thanks,
Hui

2

I'm pretty sure you will need something to at least set up the ATAGS and prep registers r0-r2 before jumping into the kernel.

Hui Chen wrote:

3

Given the insistence on list of using a modern version of u-boot, I'm fairly
sure that the kernel is currently relying on u-boot to initialise
various parts of
the hardware, although it is not clear what parts exactly, and what division
there is between u-boot and kernel.

Cheers,

Benno

4

Copying the OMAP initialization part from u-boot to the kernel may do the job.

5

Sebastian Kruber said the following on 12/03/2009 10:55 AM:

Copying the OMAP initialization part from u-boot to the kernel may do the job.

how about thinking about doing a small configuration header and booting
kernel all from scratch..
wont that be cool?

6

Sebastian Kruber said the following on 12/03/2009 10:55 AM:

Copying the OMAP initialization part from u-boot to the kernel may do the job.

how about thinking about doing a small configuration header and booting
kernel all from scratch..
wont that be cool?

Or at least a CH + u-boot to avoid the need for Xloader...

7

See the link below for instructions on adding a CH to u-boot. I
haven't tried it yet but it looks promising.

http://nishanthmenon.blogspot.com/2009/05/configuration-header-no-more-x-loader.html

frank