[U-Boot] passing board description structure when loading OS image

[U-Boot] passing board description structure when loading OS image

[Ivan Krivonos]

Hi everyone,

Is there any special reason to not pass the board description
structure to OS when loading OS image ? u-boot does not pass
bd_t pointer to any images not loaded with "bootm". We cannot
convert our image to u-boot format and we want to access board
description structure. Could you please say if there are any options
to get bd_t except for direct u-boot patching ?

[U-Boot] passing board description structure when loading OS image

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Ivan,

In message <CAF10W3y1mYmnqMeWRAJzEogoaayNGkHTbakCT7LZ2qrjtJvLEA@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> 
> Is there any special reason to not pass the board description
> structure to OS when loading OS image ? u-boot does not pass

Passing a binary data structure like bd_t is an extremely ugly, error
prone and risky way to transfer information between independent
software units.  This design originates from v2.2 PPC Linux kernels,
i. e. way over 15 years ago.  It was broken by then (but was the nly
thing we had), and there is zero reason to use it nowadays.

> bd_t pointer to any images not loaded with "bootm". We cannot
> convert our image to u-boot format and we want to access board
> description structure. Could you please say if there are any options
> to get bd_t except for direct u-boot patching ?

Such hardware related information should be passed in the device tree.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
1st Old Man:  Gee, its windy today.
2nd Old Man:  No it's not... it's Thursday.
3rd Old Man:  Yeh, me too.  Let's go for a beer.