This directory contains the Kernels for Slackware ARM's
supported architectures.

These Kernels are extracted from the slackware/a/kernel-*.
packages.

For details of using these Kernels and Initial RAM disks,
please see the installation instructions in the root directory
of the Slackware ARM tree, for example:


 slackwarearm-14.0/INSTALL_KIRKWOOD.TXT 
 slackwarearm-14.0/INSTALL_QEMU.TXT

These documents guide you step by step how to install Slackware
ARM and how which files to choose from this directory.

Each Kernel directory contains:
-------------------------------

  [ ] An initial RAM disk ('initrd' or 'uinitrd')
      These are required to boot the kernels.  The initrd
      contains the Kernel modules, providing support for hardware
      and filesystems.

  [ ] A Linux Kernel ('zImage' or 'uImage')
      This is the Linux Kernel.

There are two versions of the Kernel and the Initial RAM disk.
The 'uImage' and 'uinitrd' files are for use with the Das U-Boot
Linux loader, which is widely used on some ARM platforms.

The 'zImage' files are standard gzip compressed Kernel images
(from a 'make zImage' in the Linux kernel source), and
the 'initrd' files are gzip compressed cpio archives.

Booting the initial RAM disks
-----------------------------

To boot the Kernel with the initrd, you will need to specify a 
few kernel command line options:

 [ ] The location of the root filesystem

 [ ] The filesystem format used

     root=/dev/xxx rootfs=<filesystem type>

 example: 

     root=/dev/sda2 rootfs=ext3

          the root filesystem resides on /dev/sda2 and is formatted
          using the 'ext3' filesystem.
          Following the installation of Slackware ARM, you'll need to
          specify the filesystem type (all lower case letters) to
          match what you chose at installation time.


It's also possible to rebuild the initrd using the 'mkinitrd' tool, but
for first boot at least, you'll need to manually specify these to your
boot loader since the default configuration in the initrd most likely
won't match your installation.

Creating/updating the initrd
----------------------------

If you want to update the initrd, please read the document included in
the "mkinitrd" package:

/usr/doc/mkinitrd-*/ README.initrd


Unpacking the uInitrd files
---------------------------

If you wish to unpack one of the U-Boot image files, you can
use this command as root (if you wish to preserve the permissions):

# mkdir /tmp/unpack && cd /tmp/unpack
# dd if=/path/to/uInitrd bs=64 skip=1 | gzip -dc | cpio -div

-- 
Stuart Winter <mozes@slackware.com>
10-May-2009