[U-Boot-Users] Field upgrade

Thomas Lange
2003-12-02T21:25:42Z

Sure there is a sw solution! We have been using it for
2 years now. Check out board "gth".

We use a pre loader called miniboot, which boots the first
image with correct crc it finds in flash.

See http://www.opensource.se/

This allows us to upgrade u-boot in field. Even if we loose
power during upgrade, we will always have a valid u-boot
image to boot.

/Thomas

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> In message <3FCCA417.9020500@2net.co.uk> you wrote:
>
>>One of my requirements is that the firmware be field upgradeable. The
>>problem at the moment is that if something goes wrong while erasing and
>>programming a new u-boot there is no recovery without a jtag/bdm
>>debugger. Does anyone have a solution, or is it not a problem in
>
>
> There is no solution in software alone. If you have hardware support
> which for example detects a failing boot (by waiting with timeout for
> a signal to be set by a successfully booting system) and then toggles
> for example boot devices you can do something like that.
>
> But there is no simple way to do this in software alone.
>
>
>>practice? I was playing with the idea of having a backup u-boot and some
>>method of falling back to it if the primary copy is corrupt.
>
>
> You can create a backup copy of U-Boot - but how will you boot it?
> U-Boot is linked for a fix address so you cannot easily shift it in
> memory. And even if you could - your board will still start from a
> fix reset vector - if it does not find valifd code there you may have
> a working image somewhere else but it will not help you.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>