Re: [PATCH OSSTEST v4 00/13] support for ARM32 arndale and cubietruck platforms

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@citrix.com>]

On Wed, 2015-01-21 at 11:17 +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:

I initially forgot to set the new UBootSetXenAddrR property on the
existing midway systems, as required by 653d0af2fd70 "Osstest/Debian:
Remove hardcoded addresses from boot.scr", so the initial flight failed.

The flight which is currently in progress (33888) has failed
ts-host-reboot on arm with (from the serial log):
        12349569 bytes read in 401 ms (29.4 MiB/s)
        Sorry, I could not convert "xbc7081>"
        Loaded initrd.img-3.16.7-ckt4+ to 0x04000000 (0xbc7081)

The ts-xen-install log shows that the relevant fragment of boot.scr is:
        ext2load scsi 0 \${ramdisk_addr_r} initrd.img-3.16.7-ckt4+
        fdt mknod /chosen module@1
        fdt set /chosen/module@1 compatible "xen,linux-initrd" "xen,multiboot-module"
        fdt set /chosen/module@1 reg <\${ramdisk_addr_r} 0x\${filesize}>
        echo Loaded initrd.img-3.16.7-ckt4+ to \${ramdisk_addr_r} (\${filesize})

I think this is a combination of ee5e442f15eb "Osstest/Debian: Add 0x
prefix to $filesize" from this series and a much older change in
e6e9078c80d6 "Debian: more corrections to arm u-boot rune" which removed
a space from before the ">", probably because I couldn't remember what
it was for...

It turns out that the ext2load command on midway only sets filesize with
the 0x prefix, but e.g. tftp doesn't. This doesn't occur on arndale or
cubietruck which has much newer u-boot which has this bug fixed (not
sure by what but [0] look like candidates).

Based on the email threads referenced by ee5e442f15e[1] I think we
should consider this a quirk/bug on the midway platform.

In theory I could try upgrading the u-boot firmware on these systems
(it's still supported by mainline u-boot), but to be honest with Calxeda
no longer existing I'm reluctant to do anything which might have any
chance of bricking the systems.

I'm not sure how specific to make this quirk and whether it is worth
doing via the hostdb or just directly in Debian.pm. Options:

      * Make the addition of the 0x prefix conditional on !
        platform-midway
      * Add a new host prop e.g. UBootLoadFilesizePrefix, defaulting to
        0x and set to '' on midway machines
      * A similar host flag to control the addition (or, more likely, 
        the omission of) of the 0x

Ian.

[0] http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=commit;h=b770e88a6c2548727f0d57a3e9e8bb0830f977b5
    http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=commit;h=3f83c87ee58d86e9a9d2e50b62f38c728bfb31f6

[1] http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2014-October/193622.html,
    http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2014-November/194150.html and
    http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2014-November/194150.html.