u-boot in restricted environment: networking over serial

[Tom Rini]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 02:55:53PM +0100, Ferenc Fejes wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Is it possible to use the serial port for u-boot networking? For example, given
> a restricted environment where the FIT image is available with ethernet firmware
> and drivers, so it is not possible to boot it with DHCP boot since there is no
> networking. Or simply the ethernet NIC has no u-boot driver at all. For such
> cases, I assume ymodem is recommended to download and boot the FIT image.
> 
> However, experimenting with different images and debugging, it would be more
> convenient if serial could be used as both data and console channel. Is this
> possible?
> 
> A simple example:
> 1. ppp on the host machine, with IP forward, NAT, etc.
> 2. u-boot establish a ppp connection over serial to the host
> 3. u-boot starts a netconsole session to the host
> 4. user can use netconsole and wget to download images
> 
> I was thinking of PPP, but that's probably not supported by u-boot. Anything
> similar with RNDIS and USB CDC ACM?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any hint!

Typically we use x/y/zmodem for sending data over the serial port in
U-Boot as no, we do not have networking support via serial port. Thanks.

-- 
Tom
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