Re: [Etherboot-developers] Porting Etherboot to MIPS

[Markus G. <ma...@gu...>]

> I am in the position where I need to use bootp to load a Linux kernel onto a diskless embedded system with a MIPS processor.  There seems to only be 2 main tools to do this: Etherboot and Netboot.  However, both only support the x86 architecture.  Since use of this type of tool is imperative to my project, I have decided to port Etherboot over to the MIPS architecture.  I have my own MIPS specific boot loader.  I am hoping that the boot loader is the only part of Etherboot that is x86 specific.  Is there any reason that I should not attempt to port this over to MIPS?

If you feel comfortable writing MIPS assembly code, and if you have
a good understanding of how the bootstrapping code has to look like,
then I don't see why you couldn't port etherboot. You will probably
have to rewrite both the assembly glue code, that is neccessary to
use C from within a BIOS ROM, and you will have to rewrite
mknbi-linux for the second-stage loader. Hopefully, the C code is
sufficiently portable to not require any major changes.


Markus

-- 
Markus Gutschke                                Resonate, Inc.
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