[PATCH u-boot-mvebu v2 00/41] kwboot / kwbimage improvements reducing image size

Marek Behún marek.behun at nic.cz
Mon Jul 19 14:20:23 CEST 2021


Hi Stefan and others,

this is v2 of the series of improvements to kwboot, kwbimage and mvebu,
with main motivation the reduction of KWB image size.

Changes since v1:
- change of cover letter message + information about boot times added
- some additional small fix patches are added
- we do not remove the SPL code for loading U-Boot, but add the option to
  make BootROM do it. By default SPL code is used to load main U-Boot
  binary, since it seems to be faster than BootROM (at least on Turris
  Omnia). If users want to use BootROM for this, they need to disable
  the necessary media (SPI NOR / NAND / SATA) support in SPL

This series makes correct usage of BootROM's code for loading U-Boot
from NOR / NAND: currently, only SPL is read by BootROM and the main
U-Boot is read by SPL.

We can use BootROM to also load main U-Boot. This reduces the size of
the u-boot-spl.bin by about ~7 KiB, since it does not need to contain
code for reading NOR / NAND. This patch series makes it possible to
use BootROM for this, but since SPL code may read the main U-Boot
binary faster, we leave it to board maintainers to decide whether they
want to use BootROM or SPL code to load the main U-Boot binary. (The
rule of thumb, I guess, is to use SPL if you have enough space, and
BootROM if you need the additional 7 KiB.)

This patch series also reduces the size of the u-boot-spl.kwb binary
by addutuibak ~29 KiB (depending on board, this is on Turris Omnia),
by getting rid of the offseting of main U-Boot binary to a specific
point on the boot device, and instead using information from the
kwbimage header to find main U-Boot binary.

On Turris Omnia, the size differences and boot time differences are:
                  before     after      after with booting via BootROM
  u-boot-spl.kwb  901632 B   872960 B   864768 B
  u-boot-spl.bin  115526 B   115898 B   107994 B
  boot time         2426 ms    2411 ms    3283 ms

As can be seen, after this patch series, when still loading main U-Boot
binary via SPL code, the boot time is on Turris Omnia reduced from
2426 ms to 2411 ms. When booting via BootROM is preferred, the boot time
increases to 3283 ms, but we save additional 7 KiB in the u-boot-spl.kwb
binary.

Before merging, this series should be tested on as many relevant
boards as possible. The affected boards are:
- clearfog
- controlcenterdc
- db-88f6720
- db-88f6820-amc
- db-88f6820-gp
- db-mv784mp-gp
- ds414
- helios4
- theadorable_debug
- turris_omnia
- x530

Marek Behún (2):
  tools: kwbimage: Add constant for SDIO bootfrom
  tools: kwbimage: Cosmetic fix - remove redundant space character

Pali Rohár (39):
  tools: kwbimage: Fix compilation without CONFIG_SYS_U_BOOT_OFFS
  tools: kwbimage: Simplify aligning and calculating checksum
  tools: kwbimage: Align SPI and NAND images to 256 bytes
  tools: kwbimage: Fix generation of SATA, SDIO and PCIe images
  tools: kwbimage: Don't crash when binary file name does not contain
    '/'
  tools: kwbimage: Fix check for v0 extended header checksum
  tools: kwbimage: Validate extended headers of v1 images
  tools: kwbimage: Validate data checksum of v1 images
  tools: kwbimage: Print size of binary header in
    kwbimage_print_header()
  tools: kwbimage: Use -a parameter (load address) for v1 images
  tools: kwbimage: Change maximum number of arguments in binary header
    to 256
  tools: kwbimage: Fix calculating size of binary header
  tools: kwbimage: Add support for more BINARY headers
  tools: kwbimage: Don't parse PAYLOAD keyword
  tools: kwbimage: Add support for DATA command also for v1 images
  tools: kwbimage: Add support for a new DATA_DELAY command
  tools: kwbimage: Do not hide usage of secure header under
    CONFIG_ARMADA_38X
  tools: kwbimage: Mark all BootROM structures __packed
  tools: dumpimage: Fix crashing when trying to extract data from
    kwbimage
  tools: dumpimage: Show error message when trying to extract data from
    kwbimage
  tools: kwboot: Fix wrong parameter passed to read()
  tools: kwboot: Fix restoring terminal
  tools: kwboot: Print trailing newline after terminal is terminated
  tools: kwboot: Cosmetic fix - add missing curly brackets
  tools: kwboot: Check for v1 header size
  tools: kwboot: Fix checking image header version
  arm: mvebu: Fix return_to_bootrom()
  arm: mvebu: Mark return_to_bootrom() as a noreturn function
  arm: mvebu: Implement return_to_bootrom() via U-Boot's SPL framework
  arm: mvebu: Use U-Boot's SPL BootROM framework for booting from
    NAND/UART
  SPL: Add support for specifying offset between header and image
  SPL: Add support for parsing board / BootROM specific image types
  arm: mvebu: Load main U-Boot binary in SPL code based on kwbimage
    header
  arm: mvebu: Remove legacy U-Boot header from kwbimage v1 files
  tools: kwbimage: Remove v1 kwbimage SPL padding to
    CONFIG_SYS_U_BOOT_OFFS bytes
  arm: mvebu: Remove unused macro CONFIG_SYS_U_BOOT_OFFS
  arm: mvebu: gdsys: Remove custom spl_board_init()
  kwbimage: Add support for extracting images via dumpimage tool
  kwbimage: Update help message about how to extract from an existing
    image

 Makefile                               |   2 +-
 arch/arm/mach-mvebu/Kconfig            |  26 +-
 arch/arm/mach-mvebu/include/mach/cpu.h |   2 +-
 arch/arm/mach-mvebu/lowlevel_spl.S     |   3 +-
 arch/arm/mach-mvebu/spl.c              | 248 ++++++++++++--
 board/gdsys/a38x/Makefile              |   2 +-
 board/gdsys/a38x/spl.c                 |  20 --
 board/kobol/helios4/Kconfig            |   5 -
 board/solidrun/clearfog/Kconfig        |   5 -
 common/spl/Kconfig                     |   4 +-
 common/spl/spl.c                       |   9 +
 common/spl/spl_mmc.c                   |  16 +-
 common/spl/spl_sata.c                  |  12 +-
 common/spl/spl_spi.c                   |   2 +-
 configs/clearfog_defconfig             |   1 -
 configs/controlcenterdc_defconfig      |   1 -
 configs/db-88f6720_defconfig           |   1 -
 configs/db-88f6820-amc_defconfig       |   1 -
 configs/db-88f6820-gp_defconfig        |   2 -
 configs/db-mv784mp-gp_defconfig        |   1 -
 configs/ds414_defconfig                |   1 -
 configs/helios4_defconfig              |   1 -
 configs/maxbcm_defconfig               |   1 -
 configs/theadorable_debug_defconfig    |   1 -
 configs/turris_omnia_defconfig         |   1 -
 configs/x530_defconfig                 |   1 -
 include/configs/clearfog.h             |   7 +-
 include/configs/controlcenterdc.h      |   9 -
 include/configs/db-88f6720.h           |   3 -
 include/configs/db-88f6820-amc.h       |   5 -
 include/configs/db-88f6820-gp.h        |   7 -
 include/configs/db-mv784mp-gp.h        |   3 -
 include/configs/ds414.h                |   5 -
 include/configs/helios4.h              |   7 +-
 include/configs/theadorable.h          |   3 -
 include/configs/turris_omnia.h         |   7 -
 include/configs/x530.h                 |   3 -
 include/spl.h                          |   1 +
 scripts/config_whitelist.txt           |   1 -
 tools/Makefile                         |   8 -
 tools/kwbimage.c                       | 437 ++++++++++++++++++-------
 tools/kwbimage.h                       |  54 ++-
 tools/kwboot.c                         |  24 +-
 43 files changed, 651 insertions(+), 302 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 board/gdsys/a38x/spl.c

-- 
2.31.1



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