Linux Boot Architecture coordination meeting

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 18:01 Tue 21 Jun     , Olivier Martin wrote:
> Thanks Grant for adding me to the list,
> To introduce myself, I am part of the UEFI team at ARM Ltd. I am also the
> maintainer of the ARM Packages in the Open Source implementation of UEFI
> (http://www.tianocore.org/ ).
> 
> Maybe an issue this "ARM Boot Architecture" topic should solve is the
> interface between the boot loader and the Linux kernel binary.
> 
> Recently, I was trying to extend our ARM UEFI boot loader to detect the type
> of the Linux kernel binary:
> - zImage, non-compressed Image, uImage format
> - ATAG or FDT support
> ... to start any kernel by passing the correct parameters and jump to the
> right offset.
> 
> Unfortunately, it was not as easy as it should be. In fact it does not look
> to be possible right now. Defining a signature (eg: kernel binary format +
> machine type) in the kernel binary would make the task easier. Some of the
> formats have a signature (eg: u-boot) but not all the formats.
> 
> Actually, if we try to boot a Linux kernel with the wrong settings then the
> kernel would crash or raise an error. And it is not be possible to recover
> from this state without restarting the platform.
> Making these information available to the boot loader (u-boot, uefi, etc)
> would also make easier the migration from the legacy ATAG to the Flat Device
> Tree (FDT) support.
in Barebox we use the same as u-boot but we can boot a zImage directly

> 
> 
> BTW, Thursday 15:00UTC is fine for me.
15:00UTC is a bit late for I as I live now in China Shanghai

I'd prefer 14:00UTC as if the call take 2h it will be already midnight here

Best Regards,
J.