Utilite support

[Ian Lepore]

On Sat, 2014-11-22 at 04:06 +0100, Bernd Walter wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 08:35:56AM -0700, Ian Lepore wrote:
> > On Fri, 2014-11-21 at 14:04 +0100, Waschbüsch Martin wrote:
> > > > Am 20.11.2014 um 18:19 schrieb Ian Lepore <ian at FreeBSD.org>:
> > > > 
> > > > There is some chance that "it might just work."  Actually a better
> > > > chance now than when I originally wrote that. :)  Try using crochet for
> > > > wandboard and in the wandboard kernel config file change FDT_DTS_FILE to
> > > > "imx6q-cm-fx6.dts".  There's a good chance you'll end up with a bootable
> > > > image on an sdcard.
> > > > 
> > > > You will need a serial console for debugging, we don't support a video
> > > > console yet on imx6 systems.  The Compulab FitPc2 x86 systems need a
> > > > special serial debugging cable that you have to buy separately.  I hope
> > > > that's not also the case with Utilite.
> > > > 
> > > > -- Ian
> > > 
> > > Hello Ian,
> > > 
> > > I tried to follow your suggestion, but realized that there might be
> > > a significant difference between Wandboard and Utilite: Utilite does
> > > not read u-boot from disk. Instead, it holds u-boot as 'firmware' in
> > > a flash module.
> > > Don't know why I had not realized this earlier, but anyway, I guess
> > > if I had compiled it before, I would have noticed. So far I had played
> > > around with pre-built Wandboard images...
> > > What this means is that the current crochet scripts will fail because
> > > the u-boot compilation for cm-fx6 will not output a u-boot.imx file and
> > > is probably not needed anyway.
> > > What I will try next is make a copy of crochet's boards/Wandboard to
> > > boards/Utilite and try to adapt the setup.sh script.
> > > Questions:
> > > Are there requirements that u-boot must meet in order to boot ubldr? If
> > > so, I'll have to look into rebuilding u-boot plus flashing that.
> > > 
> > > Martin
> > 
> > I'll attach the patches I use for building u-boot (I use the uboot for
> > Technexion EDM modules for Wandboard too; wandboard uses technexion
> > modules).  The API option is the main one for running ubldr.
> > 
> > Check whether the uboot on the Utilite has the 'bmode' command.  You may
> > be able to insert an sdcard with a new uboot and freebsd on it and say
> > "bmode mmc0" (or mmc1 or whatever) and the system will reset and boot
> > from the sdcard instead of the flash.
> > 
> > My Cubox i4pro arrived yesterday.  Its uboot doesn't have the API option
> > (they almost never do; linux doesn't use it).  I tried compiling the dtb
> > into the kernel and launching it directly, and that fails because the
> > cubox dts doesn't have a memory=<> property.  I think the uboot probably
> > figures out the amount of ram and modifies the dtb it passes to the
> > kernel.  Ick.  I hacked around that and now the kernel hangs as soon as
> > initarm() installs new page tables.
> 
> So how is that uboot thing handled in this case?
> Can you go and compile uboot from the same source as for a wandboard, or
> do we need to have different source for each of the boards?
> As you know I do own a bunch of different iMX6 boards and I'm happy to
> do test boots and minor tweaking (if required by readin gschematics) on
> all of them.
> 

I'm trying to figure that out at this very moment.

A while back I came up with a single master u-boot-imx6 port that works
for all flavors (solo, dual, quad) of wandboards and technexion edm
modules.  But the u-boot sources I used for that don't have the cubox
stuff, so first I've got to get some sources that do.

I think that's probably the world we're stuck in... more or less a
separate u-boot port for every flavor of board we support, with maybe an
occasional opportunity to collapse several similar boards into one port.
A lot of times there are vendor-specific tweaks to u-boot and they don't
always push them back to the u-boot project, they just publish them on
github to comply with gpl (if you're lucky) and call it done.

-- Ian