Subject: Appended DTB files for multi-machine kernels

From: [email-masked] (Daniel Mack)
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 01:02:25 +0200

Hi Arnd,

On 04.07.2013 23:34, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Thursday 04 July 2013, Mark Brown wrote:

>> Another way of skinning this would be for either the kernel to contain
>> a set of machine ID to compatible string mappings or for the device
>> trees for the boards to have an additional properties giving the machine
>> IDs that the boards match.  The kernel could then look for multiple DTBs
>> appended to the image and try to pick one based on ATAGs.
> 
> IIRC there is actually an unused field in the dtb header that could
> be used to match a board ID.

While that would help many users, it doesn't cover our case where
different board revisions require different DTBs to be loaded, depending
on the supplied ATAG.

I think I'll go for Nicolas Pitre's suggestion as first step. He's right
that's it's a hack anyway, and we're just dealing with legacy systems
here, and hence it might not even be worth caring too much about a
proper solution.

Thanks for all the answers,
Daniel