[U-Boot-Users] 1.3.3-rc3 - release status

[Remy Bohmer]

Hello Wolfgang,

2008/5/5 Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de>:
> Hello,
>  U-Boot v1.3.3-rc3 has been released.
>  The major architectures (PowerPC, ARM, MIPS) seemt o be in a prtty
>  good shape now, with only few (usually minor and/or old) issues
>  remaining.
>  So please - help test the new code, and report any  problems  /  post
>  remaining fixes within the next few days.

I am looking at this tree, and am trying to get the AT91SAM9261-EK
board up and running, I derived it from the AT91SAM9260-EK board (and
the Atmel 1.1.5 U-boot release which works), and I notice some
oddities, from which I assume that they are also there in the 9260
tree (I cannot verify this, because I do not have the 9260-EK board
available, I hope Haavard is capable of checking these on 9260EK?)

Here they come:
* The environment variables work strange. When the environment section
in dataflash has been erased (fresh install), the first boot will
produce garbage when the 'printenv'  command is executed. (It even
reports that the size of the environment is bigger than possible.)
* the 'saveenv' command corrects this, but I can store many variables
with the same name in the environment, I can, for example, enter 10
'ipaddr' variables, if I want to, at the same time. 'printenv' will
list them all, but only the first one is used.

Related to the 'printenv' problem, I already noticed that the setup of
the dataflash-environment goes wrong, memory is allocated in
'common/env_common.c:226', after which the environment is assumed
invalid. Only the malloced area is initialized (line 244+245), after
which the flag 'gd->env_valid' is set to 1.
Because gd->flags does not contain the flag GD_FLG_RELOC, and
'gd->env_valid' is set to 1, env_get_char_init() will call
env_get_char_spec() eventually, causing a direct read from dataflash
(see common/env_dataflash.c), which is not yet initialized.
Because dataflash is not initialized, only garbage is read and put out
to the terminal.

I am figuring out how to fix this nicely, apparently something is
forgotten to be initialized here. Do you have any ideas/suggestions
what is missing here?

The 2nd problem about the duplicate variables in the environment is
still to be investigated, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is related
to the 1st problem.

Further, I am wondering if someone else is working on a patchset for
the AT91SAM9261-EK board. If so, I would be very willing to be a
alpha-tester here. If not, I will publish my patchset for this board
once it is working properly.


Kind Regards,

Remy