[PATCH] arm: mvebu: Add support for Thecus N2350 (Armada 385) board

[Tony Dinh]

Hi Pali,

On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 3:20 AM Pali Rohár <pali at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Saturday 28 January 2023 18:07:29 Tony Dinh wrote:
> > > > > > +#define BOOT_TARGET_DEVICES(func) \
> > > > > > +     func(SCSI, scsi, 0) \
> > > > > > +     func(USB, usb, 0) \
> > > > > > +     func(PXE, pxe, na) \
> > > > > > +     func(DHCP, dhcp, na)
> > > > >
> > > > > I see that you have also NAND with UBIFS in DTS file. What is stored on
> > > > > NAND? Does not it have bootable system and should be in default boot
> > > > > target list?
> > > >
> > > > The UBIFS in stock FW was the rootfs. But it is not bootable any more
> > > > with the new u-boot.
> > >
> > > Hm... Why it is not bootable by new u-boot? Is there some unknown issue
> > > that it suddenly stopped working? Because u-boot as a bootloader is
> > > there for booting system and it is its primary functionality. And if new
> > > version cannot boot something which old version was able then it is a
> > > bug on which u-boot should focus. If you have more details about this
> > > issue, I can look at it.
> >
> > IMO, I don't think we need to waste time with stock FW on these NAS
> > boards. They are no longer supported by the manufacturers for a while,
> > and therefore have some inherent security problems (most if not all
> > Kirkwood boards suffer the same fate). Usually people just modernize
> > these boxes with a new u-boot and boot them with a modern Linux
> > distro. It's a great thing that modern boards like Turris Omnia are
> > supported by the manufacturer and other FOSS contributors. With
> > Thecus, Netgear, Seagate... even a lot of Synology boxes, people just
> > run really old kernel and rootfs and never see an update.
>
> Well, my point here is that this is ubifs stuff and I have one arm
> device on which u-boot ubifs code is unable to parse and read data from
> it. I thought that ubifs is completely broken in u-boot but then I
> enabled ubifs on another powerpc device and it worked perfectly.

I had a similar experience on a few ARM devices. But when I wiped the
partition and created a brand new UBIFS on the same devices with the
latest u-boot code, it worked perfectly too. So perhaps it was
something in the old filesystem in stock FW that caused the problem. I
have on these ARM boards the latest u-boot (2017-2023). So if you
would like me to help testing some ideas or some problems, I'd be glad
to do what I can. Perhaps we can do it on a different thread, I might
be able to find my backup mtd dumps for an old device such as Pogo V4
and try mounting its partition with the new u-boot.

Thanks,
Tony

> I tried to debug that issue on arm device without any success.
> Having broken code is u-boot is not something which should be present in
> project and I wanted to fix it...