[U-Boot] Announcing easy Linux installation on Allwinner devices for non-geek users

[Robert Moskowitz <rgm@htt-consult.com>]

On 01/22/2015 08:20 AM, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi Siarhei,
>
> See the bottom for my reply to all this.
>
> On 22-01-15 13:49, Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> This is a somewhat long e-mail.

....

>> Thanks for reading and reaching the end of this e-mail.
>>
>> Special thanks to Luc Verhaegen, Roman Byshko and Hans de Goede for
>> their work on u-boot.
>
> You're welcome, and thank you too for all your work on sunxi support,
> especially the sun4i/sun5i/sun7i dram work.
>
> So about the above mail, I've a number of things to say:
>
> 1) I think presenting the user with a list of devices to choose is a 
> good idea,
> but I also think your solution is over complicated.
>
> The user will likely use a PC to download and write the image to the 
> sdcard,
> why not simply provide a simple app on the PC side to select the board 
> and
> write the correct u-boot binary ? I had a little bash script doing 
> just that
> for the Fedora images, granted this requires the user to have Linux, so
> maybe we need someone to get to write a win32 util for this, so that we
> can offer both options ?
>
> To me this seems much more simple, and it will e.g. also work for a23 
> / a33
> based tablets, which do not have hdmi and are really attractive for 
> little
> hobby projects due to their low price (35-40 usd for a complete tablet).

I should have waited for your reply, Hans.  You see the issues much 
clearer than I.  Yes, I *like* how I build an SD card for Fedora.  I had 
sent in the little change to add the Cubieboard2 to the fedora-arm list 
some time ago.  I might think this script could be dynamically created 
by set of files.

But it does not help for new boards?

What is currrently in Fedora assumes that everything for each board is 
worked out, and the uboot is provided.  Siarhei is proposing a, perhaps 
complex, method of 1st boot building the right uboot for the board.  So 
the SD card is built through the initial download and script (running 
xzcat plus whatever) with a general uboot, and then 1st boot customizes 
the uboot to that board?

I would still want my serial console access to this process.  At first I 
really complained about needing a serial console; it was taking me back 
to my UNIX days in the early '90s!  Perhaps I would have to pull that 
Xyplex serial terminal server out of my junk bin to get multiple systems 
supported!  but after I REALLY costed things out, I am a fan of the 
serial console for servers.  A friend has a wandboard (Freescale SOC) 
and that has a real DB9 for the console, so he needs a DB9 serial/USB 
adapter.  I would not be supprised of some Allwinner boards have gone to 
this expense.


>
> 3) As for the whole store info in nand based on sid idea, with the recent
> readonly nand patches posted to the list, which AFAIK do not need any 
> nand
> parameters, we could do one better and read the dram timings from the 
> nand
> for the SPL, and the in real u-boot read and parse script.bin from the 
> nanda
> partition. This is a bit of a wild idea I admit, but it could work, 

I would want an installer to move as much as possible of the OS to the 
NAND and eliminate the need of the SD after 1st boot!

Also make it easy to partition a HDD/SSD for swap and /home and whatever 
else (disk druid here we come?)

Starting out on an SD card is good, but a serious desktop will have a 
serious drive.