Reboot Mode Driver Added To Linux 4.8 Kernel

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 6 August 2016 at 08:55 AM EDT. 32 Comments
HARDWARE
The power supply updates for Linux 4.8 adds a "reboot mode" driver to the kernel.

The driver's author, Andy Yan of Rockchip, explained the reboot mode driver's functionality, "This driver parses the reboot commands like 'reboot bootloader' and 'reboot recovery' to get a boot mode described in the device tree , then call the corresponding write interface to store the boot mode in some place like special register or ram , which can be read by the bootloader after system reboot. This is commonly done on Android based devices, in order to reboot the device into fastboot or recovery mode."

This new reboot mode driver was pulled with these changes.

For now this reboot mode driver is storing passed arguments to the SYSCON mapped register and obviously you need a bootloader to make use of it as well. Hopefully we'll see expanded support and more opportunities out of this driver in a future release.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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