[PATCH 0/3] u-boot chain-loading LineageOS bootimg

[Mattijs Korpershoek]

Hi George,

Thank you for contributing.

On lun., avril 28, 2025 at 15:53, Casey Connolly <casey.connolly at linaro.org> wrote:

> Hi George,
>
> Thanks a lot for the series, it's super exciting to see support for 
> booting Android on top of U-Boot :D
>
> On 4/27/25 13:25, George Chan via B4 Relay wrote:
>> This is a series of patches to enable chainloading LineageOS on qcom SOC.
>> 
>> First patch is to workaround kernel/ramdisk invalid addr by identify
>> its physical memory address out-of-range. Since qcom SOC usually have
>> 0x80000000 as start/base/real memory address but androidboot img
>> specified to around 0x0. If other vendor bootloader behave similar then
>> this patch can also workaround it as well.
>
> I'm curious to know what values are there, tbh I think U-Boot should 
> entirely ignore the values in the boot image but I guess that could 
> break some other platforms.

Yes, some platforms actually use the values from the boot.img.
We had some breakage on Khadas VIM3 in this area. See:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20241003-android-fix-boot-v2-v1-1-13e8e44af4b7@baylibre.com/

The above thread also mentions how to repack a boot.img, where we can
specify a different ramdisk address.

It's a bit unclear to me why it's impractical to repack the boot.img and
specify the appropriate address. Could you elaborate ?

>
> How about adding a config option CONFIG_ANDROID_BOOTIMG_IGNORE_ADDRS and 
> just ORing it in all the places that have checks like 
> "img_data->kernel_addr == 0". Then you can enable this for 
> mach-snapdragon by selecting it in the ARCH_SNAPDRAGON config definition.

If we need to add this in U-Boot, I'd prefer this option as suggested by Casey.

>
>> 
>> Second patch is enable bootmeth-android to have chance for extra mem block.
>> Usually the fastboot mem block, to hold androidboot img, and loadaddr for
>> unzipped kernel. If other SOC have extra mem block available but
>> fastboot block, we can add extra logic to take care of it.
>
> There is a small hack in mach-snapdragon that we put kernel_addr_r and 
> loadaddr at the same address to avoid using up too much memory on 
> devices that only have 1GB which explains this crash because we try to 
> decompress the kernel to the same address it got loaded too.
>
> I think we can get away with giving loadaddr its own allocation of 64M 
> or so, maybe 96. This would make your second patch redundant (and feels 
> like the right fix to me)

I was not aware of this hack, but I agree with Casey.

>
>> 
>> Third patch is optional to enable snapdragon board to have extra cmdline
>> found from original bootloader that is required for LineageOS boot init.
>> An alternate method is to put the append string into a dummy device-tree
>> file, as /chosen/bootarg ofnode porperty, that also contain msm-id. Then
>> encapsulate as androidboot img and let u-boot as kernel binary. Below is
>> an example for Xiaomi Miatoll device.
>
> I assume you're chainloading U-Boot on this device? If so, isn't it 
> enough to just copy the boot args that ABL gives us and maybe tweak a few?
>
> I'd also rather keep this constrained, maybe an android specific board 
> callback to set boot args (if there isn't one already) and have the FDT 
> fixup code be alongside some other generic FDT fixup stuff. I'd rather 
> not have this stuff in board specific code.

I also agree with Casey here. Looking at patch: "[PATCH 3/3]
mach-snapdragon: Add support to append string to kernel cmdline", the
android bootmethod already takes care of some androidboot.* arguments.
See:

https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/blob/master/boot/bootmeth_android.c?ref_type=heads#L504

For androidboot.verifiedbootstate=orange, this is done via
avb_append_commandline_arg() when AVB is enabled in U-Boot.

>
> I hope this makes sense, feel free to ask for clarifications on anything.
>
> Thanks and kind regards,
>
>> 
>> /dts-v1/;
>> 
>> / {
>>          qcom,msm-id = <443 0x0>;
>>          qcom,board-id = <0 0>,
>> 			<0x10022 1>,
>> 			<0x20022 1>,
>> 			<0x30022 1>,
>> 			<0x40022 1>,
>> 			<0x50022 1>;
>> 
>>          #address-cells = <2>;
>>          #size-cells = <2>;
>> 
>>          memory {
>>                  ddr_device_type = <0x07>;
>>                  /* We expect the bootloader to fill in the size */
>>                  reg = <0 0 0 0>;
>>          };
>> 
>> 	chosen {
>> 		bootargs = "";
>> 	};
>> };
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: George Chan <gchan9527 at gmail.com>
>> ---
>> George Chan (3):
>>        boot/image-android.c: Workaround androidboot kernel/ramdisk addr
>>        boot/bootmeth-android.c: Reuse fastboot memory block for unzip kernel
>>        mach-snapdragon: Add support to append string to kernel cmdline
>> 
>>   arch/arm/mach-snapdragon/Kconfig | 11 +++++
>>   arch/arm/mach-snapdragon/board.c | 97 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>   boot/bootmeth_android.c          | 12 +++++
>>   boot/image-android.c             | 10 +++++
>>   4 files changed, 130 insertions(+)
>> ---
>> base-commit: 5a0a93a768487e55ebe50a34cc90d751bf99cc56
>> change-id: 20250427-android-boot-ecbb768cda72
>> 
>> Best regards,
> -- 
> Casey (she/they)