Migrate to the Linaro uboot from the ST-Ericsson uboot

[Patrik Klinger]

Migrate to the Linaro uboot from teh ST-Ericsson uboot

[Thomas Espersson (espersson)]

Anmar, please update with latest status and the remaining work to be done.

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

Uboot is ready however, we need to take TOC out of ST-Ericsson Uboot and onto Linaro Uboot. Sunil will be the person working on this.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Please provide complete problem details. Accordingly i will be able to discuss and work on it.
from mail i understand that intention is to get rid of TOC, which is not possible as i replied back.

Please add complete details in this bug report itself such that all can follow.

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

Mathieu has a plan of how to approach TOC. I believe you have exchanced some e-mails aobut this subject. Next step should be to confirm the steps needed to resolve this issues and add them to the https://blueprints.launchpad.net/u-boot-linaro/+spec/snowball-u-boot-linaro-12.02

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

Mathieu: Need to discuss the implementation details with Sunil. Actual work will be assigned then.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Thanks alot to Mathieu.
We had detailed discussion last night.

Overall we feel migrating to linaro uboot (this bugreport) is risky for this release.
As there were some known other issues on linaro uboot.

The approach what we have planned is as below:

- Use stericsson uboot itself to check and test possible changes required for upstreaming uboot.
- Once its tested okay, reflect the change even in linaro uboot after solving the present issues in linaro uboot.

PS:
Overall this will have changes in:
- flash layout.
- LAMC.
- Stericsson uboot for test and to give inputs to linaro uboot.
- linaro uboot working on snowball and ready to upstream.

Current issue is uboot refers to TOC to get pointer about environment variable.

To change and test using stericsson uboot following steps are needed:

1) Decide where environment block can be situated in flash layout. New "address of env block" should be before dos boot record and after toc - Sunil to check on this.
2. change in LAMC - Once its decided modified LAMC will have to be provided. According to new flash layout - Linaro team to check this later, or to provide some workable method.
3. change stericsson uboot to test and verify the same.

I am currently checking point 1. once after that, i will have another call with Mathieu on the same.

[Kalle Vahlman (kvahlman)]

Out of interest, why is the environment being in the TOC a problem? Upstream doesn't want to introduce code to handle reading the TOC?

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Yes. its going to be generic uboot and its not possible to upstream uboot if such reference to TOC is done inside uboot.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

I am currently checking with code modification.

In the code we need to avoid using - get_entry_info_toc.

I have following points:

1. Currently env is before u-boot and u-boot is reflashed again for bad block management I believe.

2. startup scripts address as below:

UBOOT_ENV u-boot-env.bin 0 0x0F8000 0
NORMAL u-boot.bin 0 0x100000 0

3. In emmc image created using LAMC I can see 20000 added to all address start:
Enb block: 0118000
Uboot: start - 0120000.
Uboot next start - 05fc800.

4. Currently for my test, I want env block to be as it is. I mean before uboot.
I also don’t want env block to get flashed multiple times like uboot.

5. I will change uboot accordingly and make it independent of toc.

6. Will define as below:
 #define CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET_START 0x00118000

7. No need to change LAMC for now.

8. Modify env_emmc.c based on this.

Following functions will get modified to use above #defines:
env_relocate_spec
saveenv

will update progress details.

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

On a side note. We need Linaro uboot to work on snowball for booting
Device Tree.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

i have done modification in the ste uboot in env_emmc.c to eliminate the toc dependency.

The changes are done under #define UPSTREAM_UBOOT

#ifdef UPSTREAM_UBOOT
#define CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET_START 0x0118000
#define CONFIG_ENV_OFFSET_END 0x178000
#endif

modified following functions too:
saveenv
env_relocate_spec

This is working okay. Tested with emmc flash image.

I will share changes and uboot with Mathieu.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

forwarded modified changes to John/Mathieu including tested uboot.
Modified files are:
u-boot\include\environment.h
u-boot\common\env_emmc.c

Finally will have to delete code in else part of " UPSTREAM_UBOOT".

tested with emmc image. working okay.

[Anmar Oueja (anmar)]

Mathieu will be looking after this issue moving forward. I will assign it to Mathieu for now.

[Sunil Kamath (sunil-kamath)]

Mathieu,
Keep informed if any updates or if any further help needed on the same.

[Mathieu Poirier (mathieu.poirier-deactivatedaccount)]

Linaro-uboot is finally able to boot a kernel as of last Friday and will be put to work in [1] in the coming hours. From there the TOC patches will be applied.