[Buildroot] SoCkit support question?

[Charles Manning <cdhmanning@gmail.com>]

On Friday 21 February 2014 10:30:11 Sebastien Bourdelin wrote:
> On 02/20/2014 04:08 AM, Maxime Hadjinlian wrote:
> > Hi Charles, S?bastien, all
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Charles Manning <cdhmanning@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> >> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 8:50 AM, S?bastien Bourdelin
> >>
> >> <sebastien.bourdelin@savoirfairelinux.com> wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I would like to submit the support for the SoCkit from Altera, but i
> >>> have some questions regarding the bootloader step and need some advices
> >>> on the best way to handle it.
> >>>
> >>> The SoC combines a hard processing system (HPS) and an FPGA, so the
> >>> board design can change and the bootloader must provide a preloader.
> >>>
> >>> This preloader is normally generated using the Altera tools (Quartus,
> >>> Qsys, bsp-editor) and results in source files defining the board that
> >>> will be used in a patched u-boot from rocketboard (rocketboard is
> >>> altera i guess).
> >>> For more informations on this step, please look at :
> >>> http://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/PreloaderUbootCustomi
> >>>zation
> >>>
> >>> Then the preloader must be sign using an other tool from Altera
> >>> (mkpimage) that comes with all the Altera dev environment.
> >>> Maxime Hadjinlian has done a fork of this tool in GO
> >>> (https://github.com/maximeh/mkpimage)
> >>>
> >>> If i use the sources from the rocketboard repository
> >>> (http://git.rocketboards.org/?p=u-boot-socfpga.git;a=summary),
> >>> regardless the branch, the preloader generated doesn't work, even if
> >>> i'm signing it with the mkpimage tool from Altera (may be i'm missing
> >>> something here).
> >>
> >> Yes, many people have observed. this. There are some discussions going
> >> on in the rocketboard rfi mailing list on that too,
> >>
> >>> If i use the Altera tools to generate my preloader using Qsys and an
> >>> example design from Altera, then use the result sources files that
> >>> define the u-boot/board/altera/socfpga/*, built u-boot and sign it with
> >>> the mkpimage from Altera then it works.
> >
> > The fact that it doesn't work out of the box with a really minimal
> > configuration is a real PITA.
> > As a matter of fact, I have heard that Altera is working on the 2nd
> > version of theses boards, and it seems software and mainlining efforts
> > has been pretty much put to a stop :/.
>
> What i can do, is adding an u-boot patch for this board in buildroot
> that will generate a working u-boot-spl based on the example design.
>
> >> Yesterday I posted a patch for uboot on the rocketboard RFI mailing
> >> list.
> >> http://lists.rocketboards.org/pipermail/rfi/2014-February/001281.html
> >>
> >> This patch adds a preloader signer (written in C) to the u-boot/tools as
> >> well as adding this to the Makefile to run automatically (like say the
> >> OMAP MLO signer does).
> >
> > That's really nice ! I ment to do that but never took the time. With
> > the documentation published it is easier to code this right.
> > Well done !
> > Try to push it over to the mainline U-Boot mailing list, that can
> > interests them, I already offered my Go and another Python version of
> > my mkpimage a while ago, but maybe your C version will raise more
> > interests to them.

I know people like python and Go, but it adds complexity to the whole of 
u-boot building for little gain. All the existing tools are C and this signer 
was trivial to do in C.

> >
> >> I am also putting together some build-root recipes to copy the binary
> >> over (something like how the omap MLO is handled).
> >
> > Obvious idea, could you put your branch online somewhere so S?bastien
> > could work with you and so you don't do both the work :) ?
> > I would be happy to help.
>
> I'm not sure it will be necessary, until the Charles patchs are mainline
> or at least in buildroot i could not use it.
> I think we could just generate an un-sign preloader and let the end user
> know that currently he has to sign it using the Altera tool or your tool
> Maxime, then if the Charles patchs are accepted we could changed the
> board config.
> What do you think ?
>
> >>> So my question is what the best way to provide the support for this
> >>> board in buildroot ?
> >>>
> >>> Assuming I have not made mistake, if you want to provide support for
> >>> the bootloader of this board without using any tools from Altera, you
> >>> must :
> >>>
> >>> - Use the patched u-boot from rocketboard
> >>> - Define the board with a sample design, ie patch the sources in
> >>> u-boot/board/altera/socfpga/*
> >>> - Generate the bootloader (u-boot) and preloader (u-boot SPL)
> >>> - Sign the preloader with a fork to mkpimage tools (recode the mkpimage
> >>> from Maxim  Hadjinlian in C ?)
> >>>
> >>> Another approach would be to consider that the end user must provide
> >>> their bootloader and flash it, the buildroot board config take care of
> >>> building only Linux and the rootfs.
> >>
> >> I think it is better to build the preloader from buildroot too.
> >
> > Ideally, it would be part of the uboot-tools packages.
> > That's also a reason why it would be nice if the U-Boot Tools could be
> > from the same sources as U-Boot, I had sent a patch regarding this
> > issues, but I have to rework my idea to re send this.


I have just sent my second patch for this to the u-boot list. They didn't like 
my last one because it was standalone and not integrated into mkimage. They 
might come back with some formatting stuff, but I think it will be mainlined 
in a day or two.

Once that is in place, it can be patched into the u-boot-socfpga tree and the 
preloader is built and signed as part of a regular u-boot build. It just 
needs a build-root copy step to copy it into output/images. I will be doing 
that today.

> >
> >> -- Charles
> >>
> >>
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