RE: Does Linux Mips support compressed Kernel?

["Ardelean, Andrei" <Andrei.Ardelean@idt.com>]

Hi Wu,

Thanks a lot for all the details.

I am using MALTA board with 74K. 
From your email I understand that the bootloader must uncompress the
Kernel before launching it, so the compressed Kernel cannot run and
decompress itself? Could you confirm? I am asking that because in some
book I have read that Linux can boot a compressed image and the Kernel
was able to uncompress itself, but maybe it was my misunderstanding.

Thanks,
Andrei
 

-----Original Message-----
From: wu zhangjin [mailto:wuzhangjin@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 1:09 PM
To: Ardelean, Andrei
Cc: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
Subject: Re: Does Linux Mips support compressed Kernel?

Hi,

On 8/27/10, Ardelean, Andrei <Andrei.Ardelean@idt.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does Linux Mips support compressed Kernel?

The answer maybe yes for we have added the basic compressed kernel
support from 2.6.33:

arch/mips/boot/compressed/

but which board are you using? I just checked the arch/mips/Kconfig of
2.6.35 and only found the following boards enabled it:

config MACH_ALCHEMY
        bool "Alchemy processor based machines"
        select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT

config AR7
        bool "Texas Instruments AR7"
        [snip]
        select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550

config MACH_LOONGSON
        bool "Loongson family of machines"
        select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550

config MIPS_MALTA
        bool "MIPS Malta board"
        [snip]
        select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT

> How can I obtain it?
>

If your board are not related to any of the ones above, then, you may
need to select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT for your board and try it.

If it doesn't work, you may need to debug it with serial port or the
other methods. If your board have a 16550 compatible serial port, you
may be possible to select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550 instead of
SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT to enable the serial port debugging support, and at
last, to enable the serial port debugging output, you need to enable
CONFIG_DEBUG_ZBOOT.

You can get more help from arch/mips/boot/compressed/

BTW, to enable the zboot support, the bootloader of your board may
need the capability to parse the elf file.

Regards,
Wu Zhangjin