[U-Boot] imx6 booting from NAND with bad block 0

[Tim Harvey]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:03 AM, Andy Ng <andreas2025 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an imx6 solo system and currently I am using the SD card to
> boot the u-boot.
> I would like to make it boot from NAND, but my first Block in NAND is a bad one.
> Do I need u-boot with NAND  SPL support?
>
> Best regards
> Andy

Andy,

You only need NAND SPL support if the board you are booting uses an
SPL bootloader. The benefit of using SPL is really to allow mutliple
board configurations to be supported in a single bootloader (mostly by
configuring pinmux and SDRAM controller dynamically for IMX6DQ vs
IMX6SDL SoCs).

In general to 'boot' from NAND on IMX6 you need to use the kobs-ng
tool (source distributed with Freescales IMX BSP) to flash the
bootstream to the NAND in a way that is compatible with the internal
IMX BOOT ROM. Note that this also depends on eFUSE configuration
and/or board strappings specifing that the BOOT ROM should boot from
NAND. If all this is done, then having a bad block at the beginning is
not an issue, as the IMX BOOT ROM and kobs-ng allow for some
redundancy there.

What board are you working with and what bootloader tree?

Tim