Hi all,

We've got a Linux powerpc system that uses u-boot. Generally in our environment on bootup the firmware does a DHCP to get networking info, then uses TFTP to get the kernel, which then does DHCP again and NFS-mounts the initial root filesystem. The paths on the server vary depending on which slot is being booted, so it's not practical to hard-code anything in u-boot.

What's the standard practice for this sort of thing when using device tree blobs? Do most people use multi-file images or do they TFTP scripts to load and execute separate kernel/dtb files? Or is there some other option I'm overlooking?

For multi-part images is there an in-kernel way of generating a file containing a kernel and dtb combined? I saw a patch proposed in 2008 to add a uImage.<dt> build target but it was shot down because it used the legacy multi-file format. Is there an equivalent build target that uses the FIT format?

Thanks, Chris