[gentoo-embedded] x86 Howto

[Pierre Cassimans]

Hi,

i tried out the x86 howto, and i have to say it is a great document. But i 
still have problems booting my device.

The device boots, but once it have to init, it stays there right after 
Freeing unused memory. The device doesn't generate a kernel panic, and i can 
reboot it with ctrl-alt-delete, so i guess there was some king of init done.

I tried putting init=linuxrc as kernel option in my grub conf but that gave 
me the same status.

Any clues?

In the howto is a little error. Here are the 2 fact that are not correct i 
think

    ROOT=/embedded_rootfs make modules_install
    cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage 
/embedded_rootfs/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.x

and

   nano -w /embedded_rootfs/boot/grub/grub.conf
   /*
   default 0
   timeout 10
   splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

   title=Linux 2.6.x
   root (hd0,0)
   kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.x root=/dev/hda1 vga=792
   */

the latter should be
   kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.x root=/dev/hda1 vga=792

Another tip i can give is for grub. If you want to make a cf bootable with 
grub and want to install grub on your cf from you develop station, you could 
do it this way:
In grub shell:

device (hd0) /dev/hdg /*where /dev/hdg is your cf card. This could be 
/dev/sdb */
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)

This will install grub on your cf card.

What also would be nice is to give some examples of booting the embedded 
device, like working from ram or with initrd, cramfs, squashfs, root pivots, 
using unionfs, overlays, etc. I know this is not easy, but it would help the 
noobs (like me) alot.

I've read the oreilly book about linux embedded. It was a very interesting 
guide, but i was missing a few examples in it to completely understand what 
was explained. Hope i will see them in this howto some day ;)


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