[U-Boot] How to update Espressobin (U-Boot) firmware?

Wed Jul 19 15:48:23 UTC 2017

Hi, Andre,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andre Przywara [mailto:andre.przywara at arm.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 18:19
> To: Kostya Porotchkin
> Cc: Stefan Roese; Marc Zyngier; Thomas Petazzoni; Gregory CLEMENT;
> Antoine Tenart; Andreas Färber; U-Boot; Benjamin (Guodan) Huang
> Subject: Re: How to update Espressobin (U-Boot) firmware?
> 
> Hi Kosta,
> 
> thanks again for the instructions, though I feel the road there is still
> a bit bumpy and has some potholes ;-)
> 
[Konstantin Porotchkin] Until the WIKI instructions are ready, I will try to follow the entire build process out of Github sources and post you my results here.
> Here is what I did:
> 1) build u-boot.bin
> 2) build wtmi.bin (from the utils repo)
> 3) build ATF
> $ make USE_COHERENT_MEM=0 DEBUG=1 LOG_LEVEL=20 DDR_TOPOLOGY=2
> BOOTDEV=SPINOR WTMI_IMG=/path/to/wtmi.bin PLAT=a3700 all fip This breaks
> after having created fip.bin. I concatenated bl1.bin (padded to 128K)
> and fip.bin to atf.bin manually.
> 4) create the image description file (in the utils repo):
> ./buildtim.sh 0 SPINOR ./untrusted ./ CPU_800_DDR_800 2 0 1 ntim.txt
> 5) fixup the filenames in the generated text file (wtmi.bin and atf.bin)
> 6) create the image (utils repo):
> ./wtptp_tool/linux/TBB_linux -m 1 -r ntim.txt -V
> 
> From staring at the SPI dump in a hexeditor, I take it that:
> a) TIM_ATF.bin goes to 0
> b) wtmi.bin goes to 0x4000
> c) atf.bin goes to 0x15000
> 
> Is that about right? Is it that doimage from the ATF repo is supposed to
> glue this together (step 4-6), which for some reason doesn't work for
> me?
[Konstantin Porotchkin] It should not be THAT complex. You suppose to run few build commands and get the flash image ready with almost no effort. I am mostly working with another SoC family (A8K) and need to try this build by my own for refreshing the entire process in my memory.
If Benjamin (included in this thread) does not have the build recipe already, I will give you my compilation steps tomorrow.
> 
> Another issue seems to be that the UART download tool seems to be closed
> source only and only available from the Marvell "Extranet" under NDA?
[Konstantin Porotchkin] I think it's not an NDA issue. If the UART download tool currently not available in a source form, it probably will be supplied in August SW release (17.08). Anyway, I believe if this tool is missing, we can share it in the binary form as a temporary solution. I will update you about it after my build test.
> 
> From looking at the output of the "h" command in UART mode I guess this
> tools is just a glorious wrapper around spoon-feeding the generated
> binaries in 32-bit chunks into the respective SRAM regions, then execute
> them? Possibly also doing all those register setups (via MMIO) described
> in the ntim.txt/TIM_ATF.bin file?
> Which doesn't look too complicated to hack an Open Source tool for.
> Or is this tool actually available somewhere (either as source or as a
> binary)?
[Konstantin Porotchkin] The UART download tool is working with the SoC service CPU (Cortex-M3), which runs the BootROM. So the BootROM verifies the information received over the serial line and executes all required initializations. Some memory regions and registers are not accessible or cannot be modified by the application CPU, so only the service CPU can do the job.

Regards
Kosta
> 
> Cheers,
> Andre.
> 
> 
> On 18/07/17 16:32, Kostya Porotchkin wrote:
> > Hi, Andre,
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Andre Przywara [mailto:andre.przywara at arm.com]
> >> Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 18:24
> >> To: Kostya Porotchkin
> >> Cc: Stefan Roese; Marc Zyngier; Thomas Petazzoni; Gregory CLEMENT;
> >> Antoine Tenart; Andreas Färber; U-Boot; Benjamin (Guodan) Huang
> >> Subject: Re: [EXT] How to update Espressobin (U-Boot) firmware?
> >>
> >> Hi Kosta,
> >>
> >> On 18/07/17 16:13, Kostya Porotchkin wrote:
> >>> The A37xx SoC does not support boot from SD.
> >>
> >> Ah!
> >>
> >>> Only boot from eMMC is supported, however your board probably only
> >>> has
> >> soldering pads for the eMMC and not eMMC chip installed.
> >>> If you want to play with the bootloader without jeopardizing your
> >>> SPI
> >> image, you have to use either UART or SATA boot mode.
> >>
> >> Does SATA boot work like SD boot, where the boot image starts at
> >> sector 1? And it needs to be flagged as a SATA boot image, right?
> > [Konstantin Porotchkin] Correct. You can put it on LBA-1 or LBA-34 if
> you use GPT.
> > Just remember, this image is very special. It's actually a multipart
> > image that we merge into a single blob for easier usage with the u-
> boot "bubt" command.
> >
> >>
> >>> For the boot image build you will need to obtain the u-boot, ATF and
> >> the image building tools sources.
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/atf-marvell/tree/atf-v1
> >>> .3
> >>> -armada-17.06
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/A3700-utils-marvell/tre
> >>> e/
> >>> A3700_utils-armada-17.06
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/u-boot-marvell/tree/u-b
> >>> oo
> >>> t-2017.03-armada-17.06
> >>>
> >>> The "utils" git contains also the UART download tool.
> >>> It uses a proprietary download protocol and not xmodem one as in KW
> >> case.
> >>> The flash image structure on this platform also differs from KW, so
> >> please do not try to directly burn a "bin" or "kw" file created by
> >> the u-boot build system.
> >>> The ATF git from above already contains the required changes in the
> >> Makefile for running the additional steps of the final flash image
> >> formatting.
> >>> Additionally, the boot image contains a boot device information in
> >>> its
> >> header, so you cannot move SPI flash image to another boot device.
> >>>
> >>> For the boot loader build instructions please check the following
> >> documents:
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/atf-marvell/blob/atf-v1
> >>> .3
> >>> -17.04/docs/marvell/build.txt
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/u-boot-marvell/blob/u-b
> >>> oo t-2017.03-armada-17.06/doc/mvebu/build.txt
> >>>
> >>> UART boot details:
> >>> https://github.com/MarvellEmbeddedProcessors/u-boot-marvell/blob/u-b
> >>> oo t-2017.03-armada-17.06/doc/mvebu/uart_boot.txt
> >>
> >> Thanks a ton for those links and information, that was exactly what I
> >> was looking for!
> >> Do you mind if I (later ;-) write up those steps in a document which
> >> we merge into the repo?
> >> Something like [1], which proved useful in the past just to point
> >> people to - that would save you some typing as well ;-)
> > [Konstantin Porotchkin] Sure, any additional source of information
> would be great.
> > I just notified the Espressobin WIKI team about urgent need for this
> type of document and for an alternative boot source usage example.
> > Hope the new WIKI entry will be ready shortly.
> >
> > Regards
> > Kosta
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Andre.
> >>
> >> [1]
> >> http://git.denx.de/?p=u-
> >> boot.git;a=blob;f=board/sunxi/README.sunxi64;hb=HEAD
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Regards
> >>> Kosta
> >>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: Andre Przywara [mailto:andre.przywara at arm.com]
> >>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 17:45
> >>>> To: Kostya Porotchkin
> >>>> Cc: Stefan Roese; Marc Zyngier; Thomas Petazzoni; Gregory CLEMENT;
> >>>> Antoine Tenart; Andreas Färber; U-Boot
> >>>> Subject: [EXT] How to update Espressobin (U-Boot) firmware?
> >>>>
> >>>> External Email
> >>>>
> >>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> --
> >>>> -
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>>
> >>>> I wanted to exploit U-Boot's EFI support on the Espressobin board,
> >>>> to use off-the-shelf arm64 distribution installer images. This
> >>>> should work with current U-Boot, which has support for the
> >>>> Espressobin board (and for UEFI).
> >>>>
> >>>> The firmware my board ships with seems to be built from older and
> >>>> non- upstream sources - and, in contrast to the Macchiatobin board
> >>>> - I cannot find either proper sources for all components (mv-ddr,
> >>>> ATF) nor
> >>>> *any* kind of instructions how to (re-)build and update the
> firmware.
> >>>>
> >>>> So I was wondering if there are any instructions or documentation I
> >>>> missed on how to update at least U-Boot?
> >>>>
> >>>> I see some hints that people are apparently chain-loading mainline
> >>>> U- Boot, is this the only way?
> >>>> I dumped the SPI flash and could identify the ATF FIP image on it,
> >>>> but I am a bit wary of bricking the board by just squashing a
> >>>> freshly built u- boot.bin into that - which I guess wouldn't work
> >>>> that easily
> >> anyway.
> >>>>
> >>>> And to allow experimentation: Are the boot selection jumpers
> >>>> actually working? Setting them to SD card (111) doesn't seem to
> >>>> make a difference (it still booted off the SPI flash, apparently).
> >>>> Or does it fall back to SPI flash in case the SD image is not valid
> >>>> (I put the dumped image at sector 1)?
> >>>> I see that selecting "UART" (110) gives me that "E" prompt,
> >>>> apparently waiting for some data to be fed, but again can't tell
> >>>> what to do from here? I take it that mkimage/kwboot won't work as
> >>>> is, as it needs ATF? I found some mentioning of a Windows binary,
> >>>> but hope that's not the only way to use this mode?
> >>>>
> >>>> I'd be very grateful for any insight into this!
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>> Andre.