[U-Boot-Users] Redundant environment expected behavior vs current

[Tolunay Orkun]

I will drop in this post to put some final remarks...

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> In message <444F74B1.8060909 at imagemap.com> you wrote:
>> Just my uninformed opinion...It seems to me that calling saveenv twice 
>> is misleading.  What I mean is that I assume that I have a "golden" copy 
>> of my environment in the redundant area.  I should be able to call 
> 
> No. That "golden" copy is what we call "default  environment"  -  you
> get  this  when you lose your environment (with redundand environment
> it means that you lose both copies).

Yet, the default environment normally does not contain such important 
stuff like ethaddr which is assigned per board.

> 
>> saveenv as many times as I wish without touching the contents of the 
>> "golden" copy and that there should be another mechanism to update the 
>> "golden" copy.  I had no idea that calling saveenv twice will overwrite 
> 
> That's not how redundance is defined. You are looking  for  a  backup
> copy, which is provided by the default environment.

Indeed redundancy of environment in U-Boot is rather different than I am 
accustomed to.

Anyway, at least I understand how this stuff works much better now and I 
hope this discussion will probably help other developers understand that 
what they might be getting with redundant environment right now might 
not be exactly what they think they are getting.

I really hoped you would allow to introduce the choice of functionality. 
It would break no existing boards. I have to think about maintaining an 
out-of-three patch for this case :(

Best regards,
Tolunay