Hi there

I'm trying to run a self-built u-boot on a TO3 efikamx, but all my attempts at using a self-built u-boot or booting from SD have failed.

I understand that efikamx has SPI flash, external SD, and internal micro-SD and can boot on either depending on the DIP switches.

I tried setting the DIP switches to off, off, off, on as to boot from external SD, and dd-ed uboot-efikamx-1.1.8/u-boot.bin to SD; this is from uboot-efikamx-1.1.8.tar.lzma which was on http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms ... x/firmware but pressing the power button, I get no serial output and the LED remain off.

NB: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/platforms ... x/firmware is currently empty; not sure whether it's on purpose

I tried a self-built u-boot.bin from the gitorious u-boot tree at http://www.gitorious.org/efikamx/uboot-efikamx which I build with: using the armel cross-compiler found in Ubuntu maverick (gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi package).

the resulting u-boot.bin is padded, so I'm dd-ing it straight to SD as well, but I get the same results.


I also tried loading a self-built u-boot.bin in memory: booting with the default SPI u-boot and loading my u-boot from SD with:
mmcinit; fatload mmc 0 ${loadaddr} u-boot.bin; go 0x900083C0
(0x900083C0 is ${loadaddr} + 0x400 since u-boot.bin is padded)

I would have tried loading an ELF u-boot instead, but bootelf isn't available in the default SPI u-boot.

I also tried loading the default SPI u-boot from SPI flash to ${loadaddr} just to confirm that works, and it does work somewhat: but I don't get a prompt on the serial line.


Finally, I also tried u-boot.bin from u-boot mainline built for mx51evk (Babbage) as suggested by a co-worker, but this didn't work either.


Does someone have a procedure to build u-boot from source and run it?

Thanks!

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Loïc Minier

Hi Loic,

Not sure where you got the source you're trying to build (or the one that is in the final code snippet you posted) as we have not formally posted anything and the version we're injecting around to certain developers who ask is 1.2.20

We are building a new U-Boot right now which we feel will take a lot of the guesswork and custom sd cards out of the equation. It may be a week or two before we ship it and it is a major divergence from the way the current version operates in selecting sd or pata to boot: it will rely on a minimal bootcmd and externally loaded hush scripts on the appropriate media. This allows better OS control of the boot process and kernel without resorting to overriding what I personally consider to be rather anaemic defaults. We may stall while we hack Maverick flash-kernel :)

The real question is what are you doing that requires you to build a custom U-Boot? This should be an action that, while commendably open and definitely possible from a developer standpoint, is in all practicality pointless. There are no greater available features to turn on here nor are there any major flaws in the TO3 shipping version to work around (I will admit there are some freaky things going on with the accidentally shipped 1.1.8 revision, we took in a patch that Freescale later toved from the BSP)

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Matt Sealey

Oh and the empty firmware page is intentional. Despite dire warnings several people flashed TO3 boards with the U-Boot meant only for TO2. There is a newer version (previously stated 1.2.20) but we are following the GPL to the letter on this and only giving it out on request.

A downloadable source plus a git repository and eventually a mainlining attempt is on the cards (being finished up this week..) and all will be fine then.

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Matt Sealey

Interesting read. But where is AURA?

Aura is coming with the i.mx53 based systems next year. Work is underway...

R&B :)

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

This will never (see 99.99999% of the time) work. There are inherent differences between the iMX51 EVK design and the Efika design that would prevent this from ever working. The main difference being the RAM and initialization of that RAM. These are handled by the iMX very early in the boot cycle, and there's very little chance that they would be compatible with one another.

I've not had a chance to look at the git repo for the uboot code, other than browsing the source. This should work, as it's customized for the Efika hardware. If you really are looking to build this, I can take a look at let you know if I run into similar problems.

U-Boot update coming soon! We just have to fix SPI on Linux so we can flash it from inside the kernel.

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Matt Sealey