[U-Boot] Is there a better way?

[Chris Rigg]

Hello,

I have a general design question and I can't think of a better forum than
this one to ask it in. Let me know if this is not the right place to ask.

My environment:
I have an embedded system (u-boot/Embedded Linux) running on a PPC440 and
configured as a target over a PCI bus. My host is a Linux server and I
communicate over the PCI bus to it using the I2O messaging interface the PPC
provides. I am making the entire 256MB of SDRAM on my board accessible over
the PCI bus to the host. I have no persistent storage on my board (other
than flash) that I can use to store log files that my embedded system
produces. I have Linux running on the PPC with the filesystem in ram as a
ramdisk.

My goal:
I need a way to get the files from the ramdisk on the PPC to the host over
PCI.

My solution:
The best idea I could come up with was to map in the PPC's ramdisk memory on
the host and then read it like I would a normal ext2 filesystem. For
example, let's say the ramdisk is 1MB in size. I would simply map in that
1MB on the host side over the PCI bus. And then have a ext2 filesystem
reader tool that can look at the filesystem and extract the log files I
mentioned earlier. It would be like NFS but over PCI instead of ethernet.

My problem:
If I have an in-memory filesystem on my board (the ramdisk), and I have the
entire 256MB of memory accessible to the host over the PCI bus, you'd think
I could write a tool (or find a tool) that I could point at a block of
physical memory and have it recognize it as an ext2 filesystem and read it
as such. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a precedent for doing
this. Is there a better way to accomplish my goal of getting my logs off the
ramdisk on the board from the host?

Thanks in advance. Any advice/help/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Chris