[Gc-linux-devel] Wii Kernel experiments

[Marcus O. <mar...@go...>]

Hello Mailinglist,

I'm trying to bring the recent Debian Squeeze on my new 2nd hand Wii.

The mikep5 kernel from 2009 loaded via the homebrew channel and does a 
wonderful job. I like to be more flexible with initramfs and 
theoretically have access to all squeeze features form their kernel 
(2.6.32+debianpatches).

I had some success in crosscompiling ppc kernels on my amd64 box in the 
following variants:

A) Debian kernel sources + Debian patches + mikep5 patch
B) Debian kernel sources + Debian patches + wii backports from 2.6.38

Now I tried to boot the two kernels via HBC, but it gives an error 
message, telling me, that this is not a Wii application.

The file-tool indeed gives different outputs [1].

The question is, how to create a bootable elf kernel for the wii?
Or a bit more precise, what (ELF-)format does the HBC expect?


Basically I followed the instructions in the wiki [2]. But I used the 
the Debian make-kpkg tool to create whole debs and extracted the kernel 
image afterwards from this deb. The options for make-kpkg [3] are nearly 
the same as those listed in wiki:
--initrd --cross-compile powerc-linux-gnu- --arch powerpc kernel_image 
--append-to-version [...]

One need to know, that I didn't use the devKitPPC-cross toolchain, but 
the on-board Emdebian crosstoolchain from squeeze (Debian 4.4.5-8).

Maybe someone on the list knows, what to do to create the appropriate 
ELF format or run into the same traps?

Many thanks for any hint and/or comment.

Best regards,
Marcus


[1a] original mikep5
ossy@debian-virtual:~/embedded/tmp/gc-linux-mikep5-v2.6.32+whiite-1.10/apps/mikep5.110$ 
file boot.elf
boot.elf: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 
(SYSV), statically linked, stripped

[1b] cross compiled debian kernel with mikep5 patches
ossy@debian-virtual:~/embedded/tmp/boot$ file vmlinux-2.6.32+mikep5
vmlinux-2.6.32+mikep5: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, 
version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with unknown capability 0x41000000 
= 0x13676e75, with unknown capability 0x10000 = 0xb0402, not stripped
ossy@debian-virtual:~/embedded/tmp/boot$ file vmlinux-2.6.32+wiibackport
vmlinux-2.6.32+wiibackport: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 
4500, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with unknown capability 
0x41000000 = 0x13676e75, with unknown capability 0x10000 = 0xb0402, not 
stripped

[2] http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Building_a_GameCube_Linux_Kernel
[3] 
http://gitorious.org/dockstar/emdebian-multistrap/blobs/master/includes/make-kpkg.mk