[U-Boot] U-Boot: using nand write to flash an ubi image, ubi part fails

[Aaron Williams]

Hi Lars,

Were you ever successful in getting UBI to work in U-Boot? I am in a similar 
boat. I have UBI working beautifully in Linux (2.6.32.27) but so far I've had 
no luck in U-Boot.

-Aaron

On Monday, July 18, 2011 02:29:08 AM Lars Michael wrote:
> Hello Ben,
> 
> --- On Wed, 1/6/11, Ben Gardiner <bengardiner at nanometrics.ca> wrote:
> > > Using mkfs.ubifs and ubinize I have created an image
> > 
> > with 5 volumes. In Linux I could flash it using "ubiformat
> > /dev/mtd1 -f /root/ubi.img" and attach it using "ubiattach
> > /dev/ubi_ctrl -m 1". It worked.
> > 
> > > In production I would prefer to write the image from
> > 
> > U-Boot. So in U-Boot I used "nand erase" then "nand write"
> > to flash the image. Then I want to attach by "ubi part"
> > command - but this fails: "UBI error: ubi_init: UBI error:
> > cannot initialize UBI, error -17"
> > 
> > > [...]
> > > I realize that the U-Boot 'nand erase' does not
> > 
> > preserve the erase counters. So what would be the correct
> > way to erase and write in U-Boot? And why is the ubiformat
> > not able to correct the problems?
> > 
> > It's true that the ECs are not preserved. But it's also
> > true that
> > trailing pages of 0xff are not trimmed either. You
> > definitely need to
> > drop trailing 0xff pages when writing ubinized images
> > containing UBIFS
> > volumes. To do this you can use either the new 'nand write'
> > variant,
> > .trimffs [1] which is currently patches that have been
> > Acked. Or you
> > can use the free-space-fixup feature which is available in
> > the
> > ubifs-2.6 tree and requires that you use a mkfs.ubifs built
> > from the
> > the mtd-utils tree.
> 
> Ok, I have updated my mtd-utils and recompiled the mkfs.ubifs to get
> support for the free-space-fixup feature. Next I have pulled
> all ubi updates from the 2.6.29 backport tree which gave med 154 patches
> including the fixup.
> 
> Now I can build the image, ubiformat, ubiattach and mount with success.
> After a reboot I can ubiattach and mount with success.
> 
> Next step is to get it to work in U-Boot too.
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> - Lars
> 
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-- 
Aaron Williams <Aaron.Williams at cavium.com>
 (408) 943-7198