[Arm-netbook] next step is a boot image

[Pablo Rath]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 07:48:40PM +0100, Andreas Grapentin wrote:
> 
> 
> > On 17. Jan 2023, at 11:10, Pablo Rath <pablo at parobalth.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Ok. You are aware of that wiki page, are you?:
> > https://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/Buildroot_Toolchain/
> > 
> > Once you have the toolchain running and a copy of legacy sunxi u-boot
> > make sure to checkout this tag:
> > git checkout v2013.07-sunxi.4
> > 
> > make sure to change the boards.cfg (MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=2), and write sunxi U-Boot to SD-Card with the commands described after v2013.07 or earlier. This were the steps I had to take to boot a sunxi 3.4 kernel and a Debian rootfs in 2020.
> > I have documented this here:
> > https://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner/a20/EOMA68-A20_2-7-4_preproduction/
> > (Section Sunxi U-Boot (legacy))
> > 
> > If it helps, i could upload a copy of sunxi-spl.bin and u-boot.bin for
> > you. 
> 
> Thank you for those instructions, they were immensely helpful. I compiled u-boot from the v2013.07-sunxi.4 tag, made the changes to the boards.cfg you suggested, and deployed to SDcard, and the behaviour has changed. The system now boot loops, repeating this output:
> 
> U-Boot SPL 2013.07-07841-g569c37da7d-dirty (Jan 17 2023 - 19:37:10)
> Board: EOMA68_A20
> DRAM: 1024 MiB
> CPU: 960000000Hz, AXI/AHB/APB: 3/2/2
> SUNXI SD/MMC: 0

Good. I think you must be almost there.
Sorry for the inconvenience but I double checked today and I made
changes to boards.cfg myself. So I used SLOT=2 for both lines
(EOMA68_A20 and EOMA68_A20_SPL) 
Here is my git diff:
commit 3b4b766cee85be6bac873b5cf797d0def979d88d
Author: Pablo Rath <pablo at parobalth.org>
Date:   Sat Jul 25 13:42:53 2020 +0200

    Changed to slot 2

    diff --git a/boards.cfg b/boards.cfg
    index 5b61dcefa5..5a4e293e1a 100644
    --- a/boards.cfg
    +++ b/boards.cfg
    @@ -361,8 +361,8 @@ Cubieboard2_FEL              arm         armv7
    sunxi               -
     DNS_M82                      arm         armv7       sunxi
     -              sunxi       sun4i:DNS_M82,SPL
      EOMA68_A10                   arm         armv7       sunxi
      -              sunxi
		     sun4i:EOMA68_A10,SPL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=3,SUNXI_EMAC
		      EOMA68_A10_SPL               arm         armv7
		      sunxi               -              sunxi
		      sun4i:EOMA68_A10,SPL_FEL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=3,SUNXI_EMAC
		      -EOMA68_A20                   arm         armv7
		      sunxi               -              sunxi
		      sun7i:EOMA68_A20,SPL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=3,SUNXI_EMAC
		      -EOMA68_A20_SPL               arm         armv7
		      sunxi               -              sunxi
		      sun7i:EOMA68_A20,SPL_FEL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=3,SUNXI_EMAC
		      +EOMA68_A20                   arm         armv7
		      sunxi               -              sunxi
		      sun7i:EOMA68_A20,SPL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=2
		      +EOMA68_A20_SPL               arm         armv7
		      sunxi               -              sunxi
		      sun7i:EOMA68_A20,SPL_FEL,MMC_SUNXI_SLOT=2
		       Gooseberry_A721              arm         armv7
		       sunxi               -              sunxi
		       sun4i:GOOSEBERRY_A721,SPL
		        H6                           arm         armv7
			sunxi               -              sunxi
			sun4i:H6,SPL
			 Hackberry                    arm         armv7
			 sunxi               -              sunxi
			 sun4i:HACKBERRY,SPL


Now to your boot loop. Obviously something is not right yet and so you
don't get to a U-boot prompt because U-Boot is not (fully) loaded.
My suggestions:

1. Try an empty, formatted sd card and write sunxi-spl.bin and u-boot.bin with the right offsets:

dd if=spl/sunxi-spl.bin of=${card} bs=1024 seek=8
dd if=u-boot.bin of=${card} bs=1024 seek=32

Boot this card and see if you get to the U-Boot prompt.

2. Try "u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin" from your U-Boot build via Fel

sunxi-fel uboot u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin

See
https://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner/a20/EOMA68-A20_2-7-4_preproduction/#bootviafel
and
https://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner/a20/EOMA68-A20_2-7-4_preproduction/#notes
if you have never used Fel before. 

3. I could send you my sunxi-spl.bin, u-boot.bin and
u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin to test. 

4. Your u-boot build went fine with no (critical) errors?

Pablo