Bug#899118: flash-kernel: add missing arm64 boards
On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:01:56AM +0200, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:
> On 05/20/2018 09:15 PM, Karsten Merker wrote:
> > On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 02:57:41PM +0200, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote:
> >
> >> Package: flash-kernel
> >> Version: 3.94
> >> Severity: normal
> >> Tags: patch
> >>
> >> Add 60 missing database entries for arm64 boards
> >> supported both by U-Boot and by Linux:
[...]
> > many thanks for the patch. Just to make sure that we don't run
> > into problems later on: do all these boards really use u-boot's
> > config_distro_bootcmd.h and thereby work properly with
> > bootscr.uboot-generic?
> >
> > When looking at the defconfigs for several of these systems, I
> > see e.g. CONFIG_BOOTARGS settings that don't really match what I
> > would expect for systems using config_distro_bootcmd.h.
> > Three random examples:
> >
> > - r8a77995_draak_defconfig:
> > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttySC0,115200 rw root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/export/rfs ip=192.168.0.20"
> >
> > - ls1088ardb_sdcard_qspi_defconfig:
> > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram0 earlycon=uart8250,mmio,0x21c0500 ramdisk_size=0x3000000 default_hugepagesz=2m hugepagesz=2m hugepages=256"
> >
> > - hikey_defconfig:
> > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttyAMA0,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p9 rw"
[,,,]
> For a board to be able to benefit from flash-kernel U-Boot must:
>
> - be capable to load and execute boot.scr
> - provide the booti command
> - allow the definition of the following environment variables:
> - devtype, devnum, partition
> - fdtfile
> - kernel_addr_r
> - fdt_addr_r
> - ramdisk_addr_r
>
> In your examples above I could not find any evidence that U-Boot cannot
> be configured and built to fulfill these requirements.
>
> For instance build
>
> make r8a77995_draak_defconfig
> make menuconfig
> CONFIG_DISTRO_DEFAULTS=y
> CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttySC0,115200"
> CONFIG_ENV_IS_IN_MMC=y (this is a default value)
> make -j6
>
> Setup missing environment variables interactively and save them to MMC
> and you can rely on flash-kernel for booting.
>
> ls1088ardb_sdcard_qspi_defconfig and hikey_defconfig select
> CONFIG_DISTRO_DEFAULTS=y. CONFIG_BOOTARGS has to be reconfigured.
>
> This patch is only about providing flash-kernel for the boards. It is
> not about providing U-Boot configured to match flash-kernel's requirements.
>
> I think that even for boards for which we do not provide U-Boot as a
> Debian package we should allow the usage of flash-kernel without setting
> up a local override for the machine database (/etc/flash-kernel/db).
Hello,
our policy has always been to only add an entry for an
armhf/arm64 system to the flash-kernel database if this entry
works out of the box with the default mainline u-boot
configuration for the respective device. Users usually expect
that a system boots out of the box without having to build a
non-standard u-boot configuration and modify the default
environment if the system is listed in the flash-kernel machine
db.
I'm open to arguments to the contrary, but for now I believe that
is makes sense to keep this policy.
Having to build u-boot with an undocumented non-standard
configuration and having to modify various non-obvious parts of
the default environment (which possibly includes having to find
out the platform-specific kernel_addr_r, fdt_addr_r and
ramdisk_addr_r values for systems where they are not already
defined in the default environment) to make the system boot is an
extremely high and completely unexpected hurdle for a "normal"
user, and I believe that we would do a large part of our userbase
a misservice by including entries that do not work out of the
box.
For somebody who has the knowledge to perform all the
aforementioned steps on the u-boot side, it's usually easy to
also add a corresponding local entry to /etc/flash-kernel/db.
I'm CCing debian-arm for further opinions on the matter.
Regards,
Karsten
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