Hi Wu, Thanks a lot for all the details. I am using MALTA board with 74K. >From your email I understand that the bootloader must uncompress the Kernel before launching it, so the compressed Kernel cannot run and decompress itself? Could you confirm? I am asking that because in some book I have read that Linux can boot a compressed image and the Kernel was able to uncompress itself, but maybe it was my misunderstanding. Thanks, Andrei -----Original Message----- From: wu zhangjin [mailto:wuzhangjin@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 1:09 PM To: Ardelean, Andrei Cc: linux-mips@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Does Linux Mips support compressed Kernel? Hi, On 8/27/10, Ardelean, Andrei <Andrei.Ardelean@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > Does Linux Mips support compressed Kernel? The answer maybe yes for we have added the basic compressed kernel support from 2.6.33: arch/mips/boot/compressed/ but which board are you using? I just checked the arch/mips/Kconfig of 2.6.35 and only found the following boards enabled it: config MACH_ALCHEMY bool "Alchemy processor based machines" select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT config AR7 bool "Texas Instruments AR7" [snip] select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550 config MACH_LOONGSON bool "Loongson family of machines" select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550 config MIPS_MALTA bool "MIPS Malta board" [snip] select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT > How can I obtain it? > If your board are not related to any of the ones above, then, you may need to select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT for your board and try it. If it doesn't work, you may need to debug it with serial port or the other methods. If your board have a 16550 compatible serial port, you may be possible to select SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT_UART16550 instead of SYS_SUPPORTS_ZBOOT to enable the serial port debugging support, and at last, to enable the serial port debugging output, you need to enable CONFIG_DEBUG_ZBOOT. You can get more help from arch/mips/boot/compressed/ BTW, to enable the zboot support, the bootloader of your board may need the capability to parse the elf file. Regards, Wu Zhangjin
