cmd: bootelf: executing ELF files requires variable autostart

[Simon Glass]

Hi Johannes,

On Sun, 14 Jun 2026 at 19:50, Johannes Krottmayer <krotti83 at proton.me> wrote:
>
> Hello U-Boot list members!
>
> I have a question about the 'bootelf' command. Use U-Boot
> as loader for my bare-metal projects, but noticed maybe an
> issue when trying to execute an ELF binary.
>
> I'm not really sure whether this is intentional or this is
> an issue. Wasted a lot of time for trying to run a simple
> 'Hello World" program on RISC-V (both QEMU and real
> hardware). Then I looked into the source code from
> the command and noticed that currently the environment
> variable 'autostart' must be set, if not the command
> simple returns without any error or warning message:
>
> Source: lib/elf.c:bootelf():
>
> ---
> if (!flags.autostart)
>      return 0;
> ---
>
> Please can somebody clarify why 'autostart' must
> be set to successful use the command 'bootelf'?
>
> Thanks in advance!

Hmm, yes. The real defects are that it's silent and returns success
when it declines to run. It's also undocumented in bootelf.rst

I think it should run if 'autoboot' is unset - that's how bootm works
with ELF files.

Would you like to create a patch?

Regards,
Simon