[U-Boot] Proposal to add NAND-boot support for Sunxi SPL

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 22-05-15 09:04, Roy Spliet wrote:
> Hello,
>
> For my set-up I made use of Boris Brezillon's sunxi-nand tree[1], or actually I rebased his patches on top of 4.0rc7. This basically adds support for NAND-chip partitioning, ECC and randomisation. Docs for the DT specification in Documentation/devicetree/bindings/mtd/sunxi-nand.txt , and an example can be found in arch/arm/boot/dts/sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dts . [2] lists the acceptable configuration options for the boot and boot_rescue partitions, make sure to pick one of these (which should be no problem for MLC-type nand). The ECC mode for these boot partitions is called hw_syndrome.
>
> Assuming you now have a Linux set-up kernel based on this tree with NAND support on an MMC, for U-boot what you should currently do is:
> 1) in include/configs/sunxi-common.h, adjust the parameters <CONFIG_NAND_SUNXI_>PAGE_SIZE, ECC_STEP, ECC_STRENGTH to match your NAND chip and DT configuration.
> 2) Build
> 3) Use your MMC to flash u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin onto NAND:
> # flash_erase /dev/mtd0
> # nandwrite -p /dev/mtd0 u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
> 4) Reboot without the MMC card and see U-boot load

Ok, it took me way longer then I wanted (see below) but I've this
working now. It is cool to see u-boot load from nand :)
>
> That should be all.
>
> @Alex: To answer your question specifically: It's likely that the parameters in sunxi-common.h mentioned above might not match your NAND-chip configuration in the Linux kernel. I can't tell you precisely how to fetch these details from the 3.4 kernel, sorry. I recall Daniel using 24-bit strength ECC with otherwise equal parameters, but perhaps he can help you with this better than I can.

Alex, could it be that you are writing the nand using
a (rebased) version of bbrezillon's sunxi-nand-next branch ?

I started with that too because it is much newer and contains
various bug fixes, but it seems that it also contains a new
bug causing it to write the NAND in such a way that the BROM
and u-boot SPL code will not read it.

I've just pushed a rebased version of the sunxi-nand branch of
Boris here:

https://github.com/jwrdegoede/linux-sunxi/commits/sunxi-nand-experiment

And that works for me, where as before I got the exact same errors
trying to fel load a nand enabled spl.

I'm working on merging over all the changes from the sunxi-nand-next
branch onto my working sunxi-nand-experiment branch 1 by 1 until
I find the one which causes the breakage...

Regards,

Hans


>
> Cheers,
>
> Roy
>
> [1] https://github.com/bbrezillon/linux-sunxi/commits/sunxi-nand
> [2] https://linux-sunxi.org/NAND#More_information_on_BROM_NAND
>
> Op 22-05-15 om 04:23 schreef kaplan2539 at gmail.com:
>> Hi Roy,
>>
>> I could definitely use such a howto. I have applied the patches to the current mainline u-boot head and try to boot my A13-OlinXino Wifi board in FEL mode.
>> I can compile and boot into u-boot via FEL. However, I get these errors when I have CONFIG_SPL_NAND_SUPPORT defined:
>>
>> U-Boot SPL 2015.07-rc1-00276-g77792f9-dirty (May 21 2015 - 19:15:54)
>> DRAM: 512 MiB
>> Failed to set core voltage! Can't set CPU frequency
>> sunxi board_nand_init()
>> Nand initialised
>> Error: 1 ECC failures detected
>> Error: 512 ECC failures detected
>>
>> This is my configs/A13-OLinuXino_defconfig looks like this:
>> CONFIG_SYS_EXTRA_OPTIONS="CONS_INDEX=2,AXP209_POWER,USB_EHCI,SYS_MAX_NAND_DEVICE=1,SYS_NAND_BASE=0x00"
>> CONFIG_NAND=y
>> CONFIG_SUNXI_NAND=y
>> CONFIG_SUNXI_DMA=y
>> CONFIG_CMD_NAND=y
>> CONFIG_SPL_NAND_SUPPORT=y
>> CONFIG_SPL=y
>> CONFIG_FDTFILE="sun5i-a13-olinuxino.dtb"
>> CONFIG_USB1_VBUS_PIN="PG11"
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_HDMI=n
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_VGA_VIA_LCD=y
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_VGA_VIA_LCD_FORCE_SYNC_ACTIVE_HIGH=y
>> # For use with the Olimex 7" LCD module, adjust timings for other displays
>> # Set video-mode=sunxi:800x600-24 at 60,monitor=lcd in the env. to enable
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_LCD_MODE="x:800,y:480,depth:18,pclk_khz:33000,le:16,ri:209,up:22,lo:22,hs:30,vs:1,sync:3,vmode:0"
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_LCD_POWER="AXP0-0"
>> CONFIG_VIDEO_LCD_BL_PWM="PB2"
>> CONFIG_ARM=y
>> CONFIG_ARCH_SUNXI=y
>> CONFIG_MACH_SUN5I=y
>> CONFIG_DRAM_CLK=408
>> CONFIG_DRAM_ZQ=123
>> CONFIG_DRAM_EMR1=0
>> CONFIG_DEFAULT_DEVICE_TREE="sun5i-a13-olinuxino"
>>
>> I just found out in the sun5i-a13-olinuxino.dts file are no nand settings.
>> I guess I can find the information in the linux-sunxi 3.4 kernels fex file for the olinuxio and need to convert to dts, correct?
>>
>> I am happy about any hints / comments.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Alex
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, May 21, 2015 at 11:08:24 AM UTC-7, Hans de Goede wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Roy,
>>
>>     On 21-05-15 15:59, Roy Spliet wrote:
>>     > The following patches take the work by Daniel Kochmánski, and
>>     make some
>>     > heavy modifications for readability and functionality, based on
>>     Boris
>>     > Brezillon's Linux driver. Tested on an Olimex Lime w/ A20.
>>     > Patches are sent as RFC. Open questions:
>>     > - Config options added are partially NAND-chip specific. Some
>>     options can
>>     > be autodetected based on the NAND ID, others require either
>>     brute-forcing
>>     > or config options like these. Do they belong in sunxi-common?
>>     Should
>>     > we make a Kconfig option for this? If bikeshedding is desired,
>>     are defines
>>     > in sunxi-common.h good enough for now?
>>     > - Style is mostly kernel-like. Satisfied?
>>     > - Daniel: do you think we can work from here?
>>     >
>>     > Please comment away!
>>
>>     Cool stuff. Overall this looks good I'll reply with more detailed
>>     feedback
>>     to your individual patches, 2 questions:
>>
>>     1) Can you provide a quick howto (at developer level) on how to
>>     actually
>>     get the spl and u-boot into the nand, what I'm looking for is
>>     unstructions
>>     like this:
>>
>>     a) Take this git repo + branch, build a kernel from it
>>     b) Look at this dts file for a nand settings example, adjust it
>>     for your board
>>     c) Once booted into the kernel using an updated dts you should
>>     have these
>>     block devices, dd spl to this one, and u-boot to this one.
>>
>>     No more to go more detailed then that :)
>>
>>     2) What is the plan to add support for loading files from nand in
>>     u-boot proper,
>>     so that we can get (e.g.) extlinux.conf + kernel +dtb from a /boot
>>     on nand ?
>>
>>     Regards,
>>
>>     Hans
>>
>
>