> P.S. I really don't understand why TS didn't just define the FIS
> directory as follows:
>
> TS-BOOTROM 0x6000-0000 - 0x6000-3fff
> LinuxFS 0x6000-4000 - 0x6....
> RedBoot 0x6....
> zimage ...
> RedBoot config ...
>
> If they did it that way, it would be very easy to use RedBoot to
> replace the LinuxFS with whatever you wanted. Instead of course
they
> grouped the TS-BOOTROM and the LinuxFS under "(reserved)" and you
> can't touch it with RedBoot. So we have to become RedBoot source
> hackers to do anything non-standard with the board.
>
Perhaps being a NAND Flash the explanation comes from the fact that
they normally have (and develop new) bad blocks. In the TS-7260 I've
got, the (reserved) area holds a yaffs filesystem, which is aware of
NAND Flash "problems" (or more likely "particular characteristics")
and performs active realocation of blocks when they become
suspicious. If you would have a normal RedBoot block, some people
wouldn't resist to try to load an ext2/ext3 image on the partition,
which is very unadvisable. This policy is very restrictive of course.
Another reason may come from the fact that the MTD driver on the TS
kernel does not parse the RedBoot partition at all, but has a
hardcoded map of the partitions instead. If you would change the
partition layout, the /dev/mtd devices would stop working (At least
on the TS-11 kernel version I'm using).
Guille
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