Porting Linux kernel 2.6 to new MIPS board

Question

I wanna port Linux kernel 2.6.x to new MIPS board. Unfortunatelly, I can't find good actual documentation with step by step explaination. Hope, you'll help me. Paper books are OK too.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

First, get your hands on a MIPS toolchain. You're going to need it to compile the kernel. I've used buildroot a few times, including for building a MIPS toolchain.

But buildroot offers a lot more than just that:

Buildroot can generate any or all of a cross-compilation toolchain, a root filesystem, a kernel image and a bootloader image. Buildroot is useful mainly for people working with small or embedded systems, using various CPU architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, etc.) : it automates the building process of your embedded system and eases the cross-compilation process.

If you would like to do this process manually, I suggest you take a look at this. It's not for MIPS but it shows the generic formula (you'll probably have to find and apply MIPS patches to the Kernel before compiling it). Try buildroot, it does all of this automagically!

I must also recommend reading Jun Sun's Linux MIPS Porting Guide.