[klibc] initrd / initramfs future

[H. Peter Anvin]

Olaf Hering wrote:
>  On Wed, Sep 15, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
> 
>>One more thing that worth nothing: I have been warned that there are 
>>some platforms with some pretty egregorious limits on the boot image 
>>size.  Thus, there needs to be a solution for the people who simply 
>>cannot add a large amount to the kernel image size.
> 
> Can these archs load a vmlinux + initrd combo?

Generally no.

> I see no need to put the initramfs.gz into the vmlinkx binary.

It's not only place there is on some of these boxes.  At some point 
perhaps they need a second-stage loader, but that's a project all on its 
own.

> On old pmac as example: when booted via openfirmware (using the coff
> format) there is only 4MB free space for the uncompressed vmlinux
> binary, then a gap for the firmware, and another one for the loaded boot
> image. The ramdisk is moved from the boot image to some other fixed
> location. If the cpio archive is part of the vmlinux, the 4MB limit is
> exceeded very soon (depends on the .config).
> Since klibc binaries are very small, it should not be an issue.

	-hpa