Hi!
Anibal and I put together a list of steps that can be used to 'fastboot boot' to a ramdisk or nfs root filesystem in LAVA issue 271[1]. The idea here is to have LAVA create a boot image at runtime based on a kernel, kernel modules, optional ramdisk, and a dtb file. Embedded in the boot image is the kernel command line necessary to boot to a ramdisk or to an nfs root filesystem. This boot image is then run with 'fastboot boot' directly - no flashing required.
This is based on discussions related to dragonboard-845 implementation, and would make such boards compatible with kernelci (for example), but also simplify kernel test jobs that don't require a system image to be flashed to the board.
We started to look at what would be needed on the LAVA side to implement this, but need help defining the semantics and requirements for the LAVA implementation. I'm also not sure which parts should be in an LXC/docker type context, and which parts should be directly supported in LAVA. I can imagine the rest of the semantics will be very similar or the same to the tftp deploy type.
Feedback and LAVA implementation suggestions welcome. Perhaps this can be a topic at the next LAVA design meeting (can I get an invite?).
Thanks, Dan