[PATCH 2/2] ARM: OMAP2+: Pad SPL binary to 8-byte alignment before DTB

[Marek Vasut]

On 1/9/26 8:21 PM, Padhi, Beleswar wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> On 1/10/2026 12:40 AM, Tom Rini wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 10, 2026 at 12:30:26AM +0530, Beleswar Padhi wrote:
>>
>>> The OMAP2 SPL linker script (also used for K3 platforms) currently uses
>>> 4-byte alignment after the __u_boot_list section. Change this to 8-byte
>>> alignment to meet the device tree specification requirement for DTB
>>> alignment.
>>>
>>> However, this alignment directive only advances the location counter
>>> without padding the actual binary output. When objcopy extracts
>>> u-boot-spl-nodtb.bin, it includes only actual data, stopping at the last
>>> byte of __u_boot_list (e.g., 0x41c359fc), not the aligned address (e.g.,
>>> 0x41c35a00). When the FIT image containing device trees is concatenated
>>> to the above SPL binary, it gets appended at the unaligned file size,
>>> causing libfdt validation failure.
>>>
>>> To fix this, add an alignment directive inside the __u_boot_list section
>>> itself. This forces the linker to include padding as part of the section
>>> data, ensuring objcopy includes the padding bytes in the binary and the
>>> appended FIT image starts at an 8-byte aligned boundary.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Beleswar Padhi <b-padhi at ti.com>
>>> ---
>>>   arch/arm/mach-omap2/u-boot-spl.lds | 3 ++-
>>>   1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/u-boot-spl.lds b/arch/arm/mach- 
>>> omap2/u-boot-spl.lds
>>> index 3bb759d8a1c..081323e6599 100644
>>> --- a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/u-boot-spl.lds
>>> +++ b/arch/arm/mach-omap2/u-boot-spl.lds
>>> @@ -35,9 +35,10 @@ SECTIONS
>>>       . = ALIGN(4);
>>>       __u_boot_list : {
>>>           KEEP(*(SORT(__u_boot_list*)));
>>> +        . = ALIGN(8);
>>>       } >.sram
>>> -    . = ALIGN(4);
>>> +    . = ALIGN(8);
>>>       __image_copy_end = .;
>>>       _end = .;
>>>       _image_binary_end = .;
>> Do we need both of these? Shouldn't we just need the one inside the sram
>> section with a comment that this ensures the end of the SRAM portion is
>> 8-byte aligned?
> 
> 
> Yes, we need only the first directive.

Would that work if the __u_boot_list section is empty ? I think it won't 
and you would end up with possible 4-byte alignment again.