Arcboot
Arcboot
Arcboot is a first stage bootloader that is able to load ELF32 and ELF64 kernel files from both ext2 and ext3 filesystems. At this time it is functional on the SGI IP22 and IP32.
Arcboot uses ARC PROM variables to find out what it's supposed to load and from where. The PROM variable OSLoadPartition must point to the partition that has the kernel and the configuration file arcboot.conf. PROM variable OSLoadFilename should contain a label pointing to a label section in the configuration file. If the label can't be found then arcboot tries to load a file in OSLoadFilename. Kernel parameters can be given in arcboot.conf using the append="..." directive and also using PROM variable OSLoadOptions.
You can also give extra command line options at the PROM prompt:
arcboot linux console=ttyS0 root=/dev/sda1
ARCS partitions
The OSLoadPartition partition name must be in the format used by ARCS, for example scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)
Example arcboot.conf
label=linux image=/vmlinux append="root=/dev/sda1 ro video=1024x768-16@60"
External Links
- Linux on SGI MIPS Hard Disk Boot µ-Howto
- SGI IRIX 6.3 vh(7M) manpage
- SGI O2 BootCD HOW-TO
- The anatomony of an IRIX bootable disk
Download
- http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/a/arcboot/
- 'arcboot' CVS repository or http://www.linux-mips.org/cvsweb/arcboot/
Patches
http://www.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de/homes/ths/debian-builds-teststuff/arcboot/
