[U-Boot] minnowboard max .dtb file

[Bin Meng]

Hi Tom,

On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 11:19 PM, Beaman, Thomas
<Thomas.Beaman at xerox.com> wrote:
> Hi Bin,
>
> Thanks you for the quick response, my responses are embedded below
>
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Beaman, Thomas <Thomas.Beaman at xerox.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Bin,
>>>
>>> I see that you have created a .dts file for the minnowboard max in arch/x86/dts/minnow.dts  What I cannot see is how to load and use this file. I cannot find any example of its use.
>
>> You can read doc/README.fdt-control to understand how dts is compiled to dtb and used by U-Boot.
>
> I am ok with the compiling part , and this readme does explain the U-Boot FDT usage. Thanks for pointing this out.
>
>>> In the RAMBOOT line zboot is used to load the kernel and ramdisk, but it does not take a parameter for an FDT file. Any insight you can provide on the use of a dtb file for the minnow max would be appreciated.
>
>> zboot is used to load linux kernel while a typical x86 kernel does not require dtb (although linux x86 supports device tree as its configuration source). And you seems to be confused by dtbs. The dtb U-Boot is using is not the same one passed to linux kernel on arm/powerpc.
>
> You are correct I was confused about the usage of the dtb file in U-Boot.  I know it is probably outside the scope of U-Boot, but do you have any pointers to info on linux x86 kernel usage of a FDT (dtb) file for configuration source

Please check kernel documentation booting-without-of.txt. But I am
wondering why do you want to use FDT on Linux x86 kernel?

Regards,
Bin