[U-Boot] Unable to boot Linux Kernel on Media5200

[Grant Likely]

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 2:01 PM, Christopher Beley <cbeley at wisc.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to gentoo running on the Media5200 but am running into issues
> getting my kernel to boot.  I am able to boot the kernel that came with
> freescale's BSP for the device, but when I boot my kernel things stall
> after Uncompressing Kernel Image:
>
> ## Booting image at 00400000 ...
>   Image Name:   Linux-2.6.30-mpc52xx
>   Image Type:   PowerPC Linux Kernel Image (gzip compressed)
>   Data Size:    2315154 Bytes =  2.2 MB
>   Load Address: 00000000
>   Entry Point:  00000000
>   Verifying Checksum ... OK
>   Uncompressing Kernel Image ... OK

Hi Christopher,

The version of u-boot that shipped with the media5200 does not include
device tree support, so you need to use the cuImage.media5200 to boot
the board.  Unfortunately, you cannot use media5200.dts file that is
currently in the kernel tree as-is because you first need to add a
'chosen' node to specify the console so that you can get boot output.
Also, the u-boot image is buggy, and it cannot handle kernel images
larger than about 1MB (from my brief experimentation).

I recently ported an up-to-date version of u-boot to the media5200,
but I accidentally deleted the branch.  I waspretty simple, so it
would be easy for you to reproduce.  Then you'd be able to use the
normal 'bootm <kerneladdr> - <dtbaddr>' command to boot the system
with a uImage.

> I'm not completely sure why my kernel isn't booting while freescale's is.  I should have all the correct drivers enabled, but after uncompress kernel Image nothing shows up in the console or on screen (the freescale logo/u-boot screen stays on the screen though).  I tried increasing the starting address for kicks, but that made no differnce.  I also tried doing something like:

The freescale kernel image is a much older image from the arch/ppc
branch which doesn't use the device tree.  There was a fair bit of
upheaval as mpc5200 support moved from arch/ppc to arch/powerpc.

g.

-- 
Grant Likely, B.Sc., P.Eng.
Secret Lab Technologies Ltd.