[OpenWrt-Devel] Firmware without SquashFS (initramfs + overlay)

[Hauke Mehrtens]

On 08/20/2014 07:24 PM, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> I found this explanation:
> http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/techref/filesystems#can.we.switch.the.filesystem.to.be.entirely.jffs2
> but I'm looking for more details.
> 
> I wanted to run OpenWrt on bcm53xx using initramfs and flash with
> overlay data partition. So I've improved/hacked partitioner driver to
> create partitions like this:
> [    2.385715] 5 bcm47xxpart partitions found on MTD device spi32766.0
> [    2.391982] Creating 5 MTD partitions on "spi32766.0":
> [    2.397117] 0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "boot"
> [    2.403742] 0x000000040000-0x000000ff0000 : "firmware"
> [    2.410631] 0x00000004001c-0x000000270000 : "linux"
> [    2.429738] 0x000000270000-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs_data"
> [    2.436903] 0x000000ff0000-0x000001000000 : "nvram"
> 
> I hoped OpenWrt will use initramfs and then will overlay with with
> "rootfs_data". Unfortunately it didn't happen, I think "rootfs_data"
> was ignored by OpenWrt.
> 
> I've then tried to use "rootfs". It was a bit better:
> [    2.386053] 5 bcm47xxpart partitions found on MTD device spi32766.0
> [    2.392326] Creating 5 MTD partitions on "spi32766.0":
> [    2.397457] 0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "boot"
> [    2.404071] 0x000000040000-0x000000ff0000 : "firmware"
> [    2.410976] 0x00000004001c-0x000000270000 : "linux"
> [    2.430065] 0x000000270000-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs"
> [    2.436823] mtd: device 3 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
> [    2.442752] mtdsplit: no squashfs found in "spi32766.0"
> [    2.447975] 0x000000ff0000-0x000001000000 : "nvram"
> 
> # mount
> rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
> proc on /proc type proc (rw,noatime)
> sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noatime)
> tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
> tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=512k,mode=755)
> devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)
> debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,noatime)
> 
> But none of my changes in / survived the reboot.
> 
> Any tips how to fix this?
> 

You want to use initramfs because the SquashFS image is booting very
unreliable or are there any other reasons?

This boot problems seams to be in the boot loader. The boot loader
should not see a difference between an initramfs and a SquashFS image,
could it be that the boot loader does not like small images or not
aligned images?

Hauke
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