Re: Updating kernel for Debian Jessie on iMX53 QuickStart

[Mike Thompson <mpthompson@gmail.com>]

To make the flash-kernel package produce the correct files that match a Jessie installation created by the following instructions:

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Freescale/QuickStart

I had to update Freescale i.MX53 records in the '/usr/share/flash-kernel/db/all.db' file with the following:

Machine: Freescale i.MX53 Quick Start Board

Machine: Freescale MX53 LOCO Board

Kernel-Flavors: armmp mx5

DTB-Id: imx53-qsb.dtb

Boot-DTB-Path: /boot/board.dtb

U-Boot-Kernel-Address: 0x70008000

U-Boot-Initrd-Address: 0x72000000

Boot-Kernel-Path: /boot/uImage

Boot-Initrd-Path: /boot/uInitrd

Required-Packages: u-boot-tools

Bootloader-Sets-Incorrect-Root: no

The changes were correcting the Boot-DTB-Path, removing DTB-Append-From and correcting the U-Boot-Initrd-Address.  I'm not sure why these changes needed to be made.

Mike

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:29 PM, Mike Thompson <mpthompson@gmail.com> wrote:

I didn't know about the flash-kernel package nor had it installed.  I installed the package, but it unfortunately produces a uImage and/or uInitrd files that fail to boot.  I'll have to debug the script to understand why it's not working.  However, thanks for the tip that got me part of the way there.

Mike

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 7:20 AM, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 08:41:52PM -0800, Mike Thompson wrote:
> I've got Debian Jessie armhf running on an iMX53 following the instructions
> here:
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Freescale/QuickStart
>
> It runs fine.  However, a major issue I have is that when the kernel is
> updated with "apt-get upgrade", the VFAT partition that holds the uImage,
> uIntrd and board.dtb files for uBoot are not updated to reflect the newer
> kernel and initrd files placed in the /boot directory.
>
> After quite a bit of digging, if figured out I can correct this manually by
> issuing the following mkimage commands:
>
> mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt
> cd /mnt
> mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x70008000 -e 0x70008000 -n
> "3.16.0-4-armmp" -d ../boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-armmp ./uImage
> mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C none -a 0x72000000 -e 0x72000000 -n
> uInitrd -d ../boot/initrd.img-3.16.0-4-armmp ./uInitrd
> cp ../usr/lib/linux-image-3.16.0-4-armmp/imx53-qsb.dtb board.dtb
> umount /mnt
>
> However it is unsatisfactory that a kernel update via "apt-get upgrade"
> doesn't do this automatically update the uboot versions of the kernel and
> initrd files for me.
>
> Is this expected behavior when the kernel package gets updated?  I'm
> worried that sometime I'll miss that the kernel was updated and create a
> system that fails to boot because of a mismatch between the kernel and all
> the .ko files that could result.

Do you have the flash-kernel package installed?  That is the job it
serves.

The database contains this:

Machine: Freescale i.MX53 Quick Start Board
Machine: Freescale MX53 LOCO Board
Kernel-Flavors: armmp mx5
DTB-Id: imx53-qsb.dtb
DTB-Append-From: 3.12
Boot-DTB-Path: /boot/dtb
U-Boot-Kernel-Address: 0x70008000
U-Boot-Initrd-Address: 0x0
Boot-Kernel-Path: /boot/uImage
Boot-Initrd-Path: /boot/uInitrd
Required-Packages: u-boot-tools
Bootloader-Sets-Incorrect-Root: no

So looks like that should work if installed.

--
Len Sorensen