# README.hppaboot    Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> 2004/07/19

The hppa boot support allows you to create a bootable CD which will
work with HP PA/RISC machines, for example bootable installation
media.

The method used for this is the same as in palo, the bootloader for
Linux on hppa. See the palo README for more details about supported
hardware etc.

The HPPA firmware reads the first 2048-byte sector off a disk and
parses information in that sector. The information in question is the
location (start sector) and length of various files:

 * a 32-bit kernel image
 * a 64-bit kernel image
 * first stage bootloader (iplboot)
 * (optional) ramdisk

and also the system command line to use, e.g.

 "5/vmlinux HOME=/ TERM=linux console=tty"

The firmware will load and execute the first stage boot loader, and
that should be able to find the (32- or 64-bit) kernel and boot
normally. Whether you need a 32- or 64-bit kernel depends on your
hardware; some will even support both.

To use the hppa boot support code in genisoimage, simply specify the boot
command line and file locations (relative to the CD root) as follows:

genisoimage ... -hppa-cmdline <cmdline, parts separated by spaces or commas> \
            -hppa-kernel-32  <32-bit kernel> \
            -hppa-kernel-64  <64-bit kernel> \
            -hppa-bootloader <bootloader> \
            -hppa-ramdisk    <ramdisk file> \
            -o hppa.iso hppa-files