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Re: Redboot FIS directory block padding


On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 10:18, Koeller, T. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just posted a patch to ecos-patches@sources.redhat.com that
> removes the padding bytes from RedBoot FIS directory entries.
> Currently, every such block is padded to a size of 256 bytes,
> probably in anticipation of the the FIS directory spanning multiple
> flash blocks. However, the RedBoot code limits the FIS directory
> to just one flash block, so padding does not do any good. Since the
> flash on our platform (Atmel EB40) has tiny blocks of size 256 bytes,
> this means there can only one FIS directory entry, which is pretty
> useless. Even if RedBoot were changed to allow the FIS directory to
> span multiple flash blocks, I would still consider this kind of padding
> unacceptably wasteful. After all, size without padding is just 44 bytes.

There were two reasons for the padding:
 1) to allow for in-place compatible expansion of the structure
 2) to make it easier for other systems to stay compatible

Maybe 256 bytes is too large (64 might be better), but I'm against
removing the padding altogether.



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