NAME¶

arcboot - bootloader for SGI/MIPS IP22 machines

SYNOPSIS¶

/usr/sbin/arcboot <device>

DESCRIPTION¶

arcboot is the bootloader used on SGI/MIPS IP22 machines. It currently supports booting the kernel from an ext{2,3} filesystem and usually resides in the volume header of a disk with a SGI disklabel.

USAGE¶

<device> is the device name of the disk containing the volume header arcboot should go into. To use arcboot you have to modify the following PROM variables:

setenv OSLoader arcboot

setenv SystemPartition scsi(0)disk(X)rdisk(0)partition(8)

setenv OSLoadPartition scsi(0)disk(Y)rdisk(0)partition(Z)

setenv OSLoadFilename label_or_filename

(where "X" is the scsi ID of the disk arcboot resides on and "Y" and "Z" are the scsi ID and partition number of the partition /etc/arcboot.conf resides on). Note that /etc/arcboot.conf and the directory your kernels are in (usually /boot/) have to be on the same partition. On boot arcboot looks at the OSLoadFilename PROM variable and tries to find a label with the same name in /etc/arcboot.conf.

Configuration File¶

An entry in /etc/arcboot.conf has the following format:

label=<label>
image=<kernel>
append=<boot options>

<label> is referenced by OSLoadFilename, <image> is the path to the kernel(again relative to OSLoadPartition) and <boot options> are the options appended to the kernel's command line.

Example¶

label=linux
image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.17
append="root=/dev/sda1 console=ttyS0"

Notes¶

arcboot only loads ELF kernels. It doesn't handle ECOFF kernels to keep arcboot as small as possible and because ECOFF kernels on mips don't contain any symbol information which makes debugging more difficult.

Files¶

/etc/arcboot.conf arcboot's configuration file

/usr/share/doc/arcboot/README more details on howto setup arcboot

SEE ALSO¶

dvhtool(1), elf2ecoff(8), tip22(8)

AUTHORS¶

Arcboot is based on the arc bootloader for SGI Visual workstations written by Ralf Bächle <ralf@gnu.org>. Modifications for IP22 by Guido Günther <agx@sigxcpu.org>.