From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stefano Babic Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:18:43 +0100 Subject: [U-Boot] U-Boot Graphics Library? In-Reply-To: References: <20130116194630.A2656203ACF@gemini.denx.de> Message-ID: <50F91373.5070903@denx.de> List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: u-boot@lists.denx.de On 16/01/2013 22:46, Simon Glass wrote: > Hi Wolfgang, > Hi Simon, >> >> This sounds like a nice feature. Initially. Then I start wondering >> if this really belongs into a boot loader. Instead of doing fancy >> graphics stuff, we should IMO rather focus on booting the OS of your >> choice really fast, and let this do the fancy GUIs. Or? >> > > The problem is that a major purpose of the GUIs is to allow installing > an OS from a USB stick/SD card, since the OS may have become corrupted > and unbootable. We have looked at keeping around a separate OS image > for this (e.g. in an available disk partition), but so far that hasn't > proved practical since that itself can be fairly easily overwritten > and we then have a doorstop. > Well, if a separate OS image can be overwritten, U-Boot image can be overwritten too, and then the board does not boot at all. I provided for a customer a solution with a separate OS and a small rootfs as initramfs, and even if it is theoretically possible to destroy this image, it has the same probability that U-Boot has to disappear. It still seems to me a good solution, with the drawback to use much more resorces (Flash) that a U-Boot solution can use. Anyway, with the current size of NAND flash, even this drawback is not very important in many projects. Maybe more as a GUI-guided recovery, the customer needs a way to rescue the system when everything goes wrong. Providing a booting SD or USB card, that can complete restore the system, seems to be a good way, or at least it was in my case. Implementing it in U-Boot seems to me overkilling, but is only my 2 cents ;-). Best regards, Stefano -- ===================================================================== DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany Phone: +49-8142-66989-53 Fax: +49-8142-66989-80 Email: sbabic at denx.de =====================================================================