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From: Eugene Surovegin <ebs@ebshome•net>
To: "Howard, Marc" <Marc.Howard@KLA-Tencor•com>
Cc: linuxppc-embedded@ozlabs•org
Subject: Re: Viable PPC platform?
Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 16:00:20 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20060509230020.GA11885@gate.ebshome.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <91B22F93A880FA48879475E134D6F0BE028A43D2@CA1EXCLV02.adcorp.kla-tencor.com>

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 03:52:20PM -0700, Howard, Marc wrote:
> > 
> > In message <20060509171520.GA10886@gate•ebshome.net> you wrote:
> > >
> > > After many years of doing embedded Linux stuff I still don't 
> > > understand why people are so fond of initrd.
> > > 
> > > For temporary stuff - tempfs is much better and flexible. For r/o 
> > > stuff - just make separate MTD partition (cramfs, squashfs) 
> > and mount 
> > > it directly as root. Both options will waste significantly less 
> > > memory.
> > 
> > Agreed.
> > 
> > And if somebody wants to see facts and numbers, please see
> > http://www.denx.de/wiki/view/DULG/RootFileSystemSelection
> > 
> 
> One size does not fit all.  We have an application with a very large
> file system.  It can't fit in the available flash, however we do have a
> ton of RAM (512MB).  NFS is not an option nor is it desirable (latency
> and availability issues).  Boot time is not an issue either in this case
> as it takes the equipment many minutes to calibrate and initialize.
> 
> initrd also solves another problem.  The combined uBoot multi-image
> although huge (>32 MB) represents a complete system firmware snapshot in
> a single (huge) file.  By selecting the appropriate uImage the host can
> guarantee the linux build, device drivers, application version and FPGA
> firmware revs (the embedded board is rebooted to guarantee a repeatable
> starting state).  This makes revision control for the overall system
> much easier, especially since the host system is running windoze.

This all is nice provided you use network for boot. IMHO this is quite 
_rare_ setup (especially Windows host!!!). For 99% of embedded designs 
this is obviously not a viable option.

-- 
Eugene

  reply	other threads:[~2006-05-09 23:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2006-05-09 22:52 Viable PPC platform? Howard, Marc
2006-05-09 23:00 ` Eugene Surovegin [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2006-05-09 23:11 Howard, Marc
2006-05-09 14:38 geneSmith
2006-05-09 15:34 ` Matt Porter
2006-05-09 16:41 ` Alex Zeffertt
2006-05-09 17:15   ` Eugene Surovegin
2006-05-09 22:31     ` Wolfgang Denk
2006-05-22 21:51       ` David Woodhouse
2006-05-22 22:15         ` Wolfgang Denk
2006-05-22 22:21           ` David Woodhouse
2006-05-10 11:11     ` Alex Zeffertt
2006-05-10 16:48       ` Eugene Surovegin

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