[U-Boot-Users] fsload questions

Charles Krinke ckrinke at istor.com
Fri Dec 22 00:58:54 CET 2006


In message
<A590D28B5042C041BCC880094CB6172E33DF45 at mail1irv.inside.istor.com> you
wrote:
> 
> But it takes almost 2 minutes to scan the flash before the fsload
> completes and loads the uImage. So, this adds an additional 2 minutes
to

How big is your file system, and how heavily fragmented might  it  be
(how  long  have  you been using it, especially appending to existing
files?). And which version of the MTD code are you using?

Charles comment to Wolfgang's comment:

It is a 16Mbyte flash partition consisting of a single file currently,
which is uImage. There should be no fragmentation at all as the flash
was formatted with 'flash_eraseall -j', then the kernel image was copied
to it. No other writes, rm's or copies were done.

The issue becomes the customer desiring to have one root file system
partition containing the uImage kernel and the contents of /bin, /sbin
and the like. The single kernel file is just to test fsload.


> the boot of the embedded system, which is clearly a problem.

Indeed. This is why I try to avoid loading a Linux kernel image  from
a  JFFS2  file  system  (not to mention the fact that it makes little
sense to compress and already compressed image - it just adds to  the
delay).

Charles comment to Wolfgang's comment:

So, would this mean that you would not expect U-Boot to do an fsload
from a flash formatted with flash_eraseall in a timely fashion. Perhaps
there is some inconsistency between the formatting of the flash in Linux
and the reading of the flash in U-boot?


> The flash was formatted in Linux using the flash_eraseall utility. I
am
> hoping that you, or someone else, can tell me that there is some
> configuration constant missing or that the flash may be formatted in a
> way that is not quite consistent with U-Boot's needs.

There are a lot of  potential  causes.  Enable  debugging  and  check
what's taking so much time...

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
Our universe is a fragile house of atoms, held together by the mortar
of cause-and-effect. One magician would be two too many.
                        - Terry Pratchett, _The Dark Side of the Sun_





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