I still don't see zevio. I'm running menuconfig and searching "zevio" but nothing comes up.

Hey guys, exams are finished and I can resume work on the kernel (Y)

Not much going on right now, here's a list of things I've gotten done so far:

• Can get *either* USB peripheral or USB host mode working but no seamless switching yet
• Device tree compatible USB driver

Also, attached is a nice treat for developers that I spent the last 48 hours hacking up. It's a nLaunch compatible OS file containing the most minimal and fast booting Linux Kernel/Initrd combination I could manage (~1.5MB) for booting Linux kernels.

That's right, a Linux OS for bootloading Linux

It's intended to speed up development by loading quicker than the TI-Nspire OS and automated deployment of code. It boots in seconds, also letting you download code over USB using the ZModem protocol which is a lot faster than transferring via TI's software. The new kernel and initrd is booting using Kexec. Basically, instead of going Boot1->Boot2->TI-Nspire OS->Xfer over USB->linuxloader2->Linux, you're going Boot1->Boot2/nLaunch->Minimal Linux->Xfer over USB->Linux

All the DTB and initrd is embedded in the file so nothing else is necessary. The attached OS is for Touchpad models only right now but if you're desperate to get it working on the CX, add compatible="zevio,nspire-usb" to the device tree for the CX, compile it and hexedit it into offset 0x100 of the extracted OS file, replacing the touchpad dtb.

I'll release the configs and source code for it soon but here's the script used to upload code to the bootloader.

#!/bin/bash

set -e

if [ "$#" -ne 4 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 kernel.img devicetree.img initrd.img /dev/serial"
exit 0
fi

mkdir -p tmp
cp -v $1 tmp/kernel.bin
cp -v $2 tmp/devicetree.bin
cp -v $3 tmp/initrd.bin
touch tmp/bootcmd

cd tmp
sz * -y -8 > $4 < $4


make dtb and make zImage, the usual way. You just have to copy the suitable dtb for your model as well.

Whoa bootloading Linux sounds great All these developments make me wonder why I ever dropped out I'm glad to hear you're back to work on this again, good job. Does this mean we pretty much have a 3rd party OS now for the nspire?

Actually, support for booting directly from nLaunchy has been there for a long time. Look in the nLaunchy source code for a directory named Build_LinuxOS. I have already used this before, with the old kernel. And if you put the resulting file in linux/linuxloader.tns. You can boot from nLaunchy by pressing tab.

Hey, I hate to be a nuisance...

I'm trying to get this all running. I've been looking around a bit and have zImage and linuxloader ready... Not sure where to go from here to get a working build. I have the ndless SDK, I'm really not familiar with linux much, but I am something of a Windows power user. I am able to use any OS I need to to get it all working. Links to a finalized download of a filesystem would be fine. I went to the link OP provided, http://tiplanet.org/nspire-linux-builds/ , and got all the files there, but the root filesystem is in a .tar. Should I just change the extension to .tns? It would be nice if we could just get a big .zip with all the stuff we need in it.

Here's the CX release of the Linux-based bootloader for rapid Linux development on TI-Nspires.

To use, install the attached image via nLaunchy and reboot. It'll boot to a screen that reads "Waiting for boot command" and your computer will register a USB serial device.

Use the following script to upload a kernel, initrd and dtb:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

if [ "$#" -ne 4 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 kernel.img devicetree.img initrd.img /dev/serial"
exit 0
fi

mkdir -p tmp
cp -v $1 tmp/kernel.bin
cp -v $2 tmp/devicetree.bin
cp -v $3 tmp/initrd.bin
touch tmp/bootcmd

cd tmp
sz * -y -8 > $4 < $4

You'll need the lrzsz package of what ever OS you're using for this.

For now, initrds aren't supported (kexec 2.0.4 is broken for initrd loading with DTBs - nothing I can really do about this unfortunately) so you'll have to embed a rootfs into your kernel image and pass an empty file for the initrd.

Enjoy.