About Microtronix Linux's boot procedure..

[Altera_Forum]

hello everyone: 

 I have questions about the boot procedure of Microtronix&#39;s Nios II linux distribution.  1. Is there a bootloader?If yes,how does it work?Is there any document available about this topic?  2.I want to create a root filesystem using just busybox,i followed the busybox section in the   reference guide,now i am confused about the Busybox&#39;s "init" application.   please tell me how to create proper "/etc/inittab" and "/etc/init.d/rcs" file for booting the  Microtronix&#39;s linux refernce design built from quick start guide.  Can i just copy the content of the original filesystem&#39;s "/etc/inittab" and "/etc/rc" to the busybox&#39;s 2 init files mentioned above respectively?  thanks  http://forum.niosforum.com/work2/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif

[Altera_Forum]

Hi trout, 

 1. Microtronix&#39;s distribution has no bootloader, but someone have ported uboot to Nios II and posted it on this forum. You can have a search. 2. An example inittab can be found in busybox/examples. And rcS is just an init script, I think you can copy the old rc file and have a try.

[Altera_Forum]

1. I think that there is a boot loader to load the kernel from flash into ram. It allows to execute the kernel code from ram. Also, the root file system is mounted into the ram... 

 But I didn&#39;t find any information about boot loader.  Christian

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Christian, 

 Yes you are right, there is some bootstrap code to copy the kernel into ram from flash. I don&#39;t know if that is the kind of bootloader trout is thinking about. All it did is copying text and data into ram (as far as I know, root file system is not copied) and jump to the entry point...

[Altera_Forum]

Hello, 

 I would like to have a confirmation about the root filesystem. The root filesystem is accessed from the flash or copied into the RAM? Where can I find the answer in the kernel source code (directory/source file).  Best regards  Christian

[Altera_Forum]

The romfs is accessed from flash. You can check this file: 

drivers/mtd/maps/microtronix.c  You can also make the /dev/hda1 (compact flash) as the root filesystem. Still no files are copied to ram.  If you are using ramdisk as the root filesystem, they are in ram.