[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Avinash Vijayvergia]

Hi All

I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very smallflash memory and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2balgo for that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression infoin the u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot header too.

Thanks
Avinash



      ____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.  
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com
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[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini]

Hi Avinash,

I'm not undestanding if you want compress the U-Boot code or if you want
compress the uImage image.
Anyway, I don't know the nrv2b algorithm, can you give me any links?

thanks,

luigi

Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 13.54 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
scritto:
> Hi All
> 
> I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very small flash memory
> and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2b algo for
> that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression info in the
> u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot header too.
> 
> Thanks
> Avinash
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> just about anything Open Source.
> http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
> _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users at lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users


Ing. Luigi Mantellini
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
Via Canzo, 4 
20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
E-mail: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com


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[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini]

Hi Avinash,

see inline.

Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 14.26 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
scritto:
> Hi LuigI
> 



> Thank you for your mail. I actually have two questions:
>      1. What is the format of u-boot header? Can you refer me to some
>         documentation?


What do you intend for "u-boot header"? U-boot uses the uImage format
for the kernels images. You can check the file include/image.h (row 175)
to understand the (old) uImage format. See this link: 
http://www.denx.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=include/image.h;h=36143e25acfe3684a751a4ee6a5cf945524ef424;hb=74d1e66d22dac91388bc538b2fe19f735edc5b82




>      1. I want to compress u-boot. I have picked up nrv2b.c from
>         Koders.com which is in use by many people :). I couldn't
>         understand how it does encoding and decoding. I wanted to use
>         this algo and do compression and decompression of my binaries.
>         You can search google for nrv2b.c and you will get it from
>         Koder.com.


U-boot is the object code, the bootloader... how can you compress it? it
is a non-sense for me. Anyway, if you need to compress the kernel image,
you need to use the uImage format and the utility mkimage (see tools
directory). I recently posted a patch to support the lzma compression
algorithm (that works better than bzip2 and gzip): you can search in the
mailing list archive to retrieve this patch.

Are you sure that nrv2b is better than powerful lzma or bzip2? Do you
have benchmarks on this point? If you demonstrate me that nrv2b is a
good choice I can consider to make the patch for the community... I have
an application that has a very small flash memory... nrv2b should be a
choice...

Best regards,

luigi


> Thanks for your help
> Avinash
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
> To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
> Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:19:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression
> 
> Hi Avinash,
> 
> I'm not undestanding if you want compress the U-Boot code or if you
> want compress the uImage image.
> Anyway, I don't know the nrv2b algorithm, can you give me any links?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> luigi
> 
> Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 13.54 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
> scritto: 
> 
> > Hi All
> > 
> > I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very small flash
> > memory and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2b
> > algo for that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression
> > info in the u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot
> > header too.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Avinash
> > 
> > 
> > ____________________________________________________________________
> > 
> > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> > Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. 
> > 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> > It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> > just about anything Open Source.
> > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
> > _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users at lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users
> 
> 
> Ing. Luigi Mantellini
> Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
> Via Canzo, 4 
> 20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
> Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
> Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
> E-mail:
> luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.


Ing. Luigi Mantellini
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
Via Canzo, 4 
20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
E-mail: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com


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[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Avinash Vijayvergia]

Hi Luigi

Thank you for your mail and comments. I should have explain why I want to compress u-boot. My target processor is Atmel AT91SAM9260. I am having a 64Mb Dataflash which is interfaced on SPI bus. The Atmel ARM9 copies the first 4kB to internal SRAM and then boots from there. So we need a loader of size <4kb which will be copied to SRAM. I have got this loader. This loader will invoke u-boot, and u-boot will invoke kernel. So I can compress loader and it will still work.

I'll compare nrv2b and lzma and then will be in a better position to comment. I chose nrv2b because I need a compression algo which can be as small as 600B (I have size restriction of 4kB).

Thanks
Avinash

----- Original Message ----
From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:37:20 PM
Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help -  u-boot header & compression

    Hi Avinash,

see inline.

Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 14.26 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha scritto:    Hi LuigI
    

    Thank you for your mail. I actually have two questions:            What is the format of u-boot header? Can you refer me to some documentation?    
What do you intend for "u-boot header"? U-boot uses the uImage format for the kernels images. You can check the file include/image.h (row 175) to understand the (old) uImage format. See this link: 
http://www.denx.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=include/image.h;h=36143e25acfe3684a751a4ee6a5cf945524ef424;hb=74d1e66d22dac91388bc538b2fe19f735edc5b82



            I want to compress u-boot. I have picked up nrv2b.c from Koders.com which is in use by many people :). I couldn't understand how it does encoding and decoding. I wanted to use this algo and do compression and decompression of my binaries. You can search google for nrv2b.c and you will get it from Koder.com.    
U-boot is the object code, the bootloader... how can you compress it? it is a non-sense for me. Anyway, if you need to compress the kernel image, you need to use the uImage format and the utility mkimage (see tools directory). I recently posted a patch to support the lzma compression algorithm (that works better than bzip2 and gzip): you can search in the mailing list archive to retrieve this patch.

Are you sure that nrv2b is better than powerful lzma or bzip2? Do you have benchmarks on this point? If you demonstrate me that nrv2b is a good choice I can consider to make the patch for the community... I have an application that has a very small flash memory... nrv2b should be a choice...

Best regards,

luigi

    Thanks for your help
    Avinash
    
    ----- Original Message ----
    From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
    To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
    Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
    Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:19:36 PM
    Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression
    
    Hi Avinash,
    
    I'm not undestanding if you want compress the U-Boot code or if you want compress the uImage image.
    Anyway, I don't know the nrv2b algorithm, can you give me any links?
    
    thanks,
    
    luigi
    
    Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 13.54 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha scritto: 
            Hi All
        
        I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very small flash memory and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2b algo for that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression info in the u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot header too.
        
        Thanks
        Avinash
        
        
        
        You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
It's the best place to buy or sell services for
just about anything Open Source.
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
_______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users at lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users        
Ing. Luigi Mantellini
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
Via Canzo, 4 
20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
E-mail: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com


    
    
    
    
    You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
Ing. Luigi Mantellini
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
Via Canzo, 4 
20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
E-mail: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com







      ____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.  
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com
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[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini]

Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 14.57 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
scritto:
> Hi Luigi
> 
> Thank you for your mail and comments. I should have explain why I want
> to compress u-boot. My target processor is Atmel AT91SAM9260. I am
> having a 64Mb Dataflash which is interfaced on SPI bus. The Atmel ARM9
> copies the first 4kB to internal SRAM and then boots from there. So we
> need a loader of size <4kb which will be copied to SRAM. I have got
> this loader. This loader will invoke u-boot, and u-boot will invoke
> kernel. So I can compress loader and it will still work.
> 
> I'll compare nrv2b and lzma and then will be in a better position to
> comment. I chose nrv2b because I need a compression algo which can be
> as small as 600B (I have size restriction of 4kB).
> 


Ok. Now I understand the problem. U-boot is a pure binary file, you need
to compile it fixing the TEXT_BASE address in order to fit your RAM.
Your "pre-bootloader" should setup the ram and the dataflash in order to
decompress/copy u-boot (vetctors+text+data) from the dataflash space
addresses to the ram addresses. After the copy/decompress just jump to
u-boot address. To achieve this you needn't to know the u-boot header
structure.
You should analyze the board/atmel/at91rm9200dk/u-boot.lds and
cpu/arm920t/start.S files  to understand how u-boot works (at
initialization time).

Best regards,

luigi



> Thanks
> Avinash
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
> To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
> Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:37:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression
> 
> Hi Avinash,
> 
> see inline.
> 
> Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 14.26 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
> scritto: 
> 
> > Hi LuigI
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> > Thank you for your mail. I actually have two questions: 
> >      1. What is the format of u-boot header? Can you refer me to
> >         some documentation? 
> 
> 
> What do you intend for "u-boot header"? U-boot uses the uImage format
> for the kernels images. You can check the file include/image.h (row
> 175) to understand the (old) uImage format. See this link: 
> http://www.denx.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=include/image.h;h=36143e25acfe3684a751a4ee6a5cf945524ef424;hb=74d1e66d22dac91388bc538b2fe19f735edc5b82
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >      1. I want to compress u-boot. I have picked up nrv2b.c from
> >         Koders.com which is in use by many people :). I couldn't
> >         understand how it does encoding and decoding. I wanted to
> >         use this algo and do compression and decompression of my
> >         binaries. You can search google for nrv2b.c and you will get
> >         it from Koder.com. 
> 
> 
> U-boot is the object code, the bootloader... how can you compress it?
> it is a non-sense for me. Anyway, if you need to compress the kernel
> image, you need to use the uImage format and the utility mkimage (see
> tools directory). I recently posted a patch to support the lzma
> compression algorithm (that works better than bzip2 and gzip): you can
> search in the mailing list archive to retrieve this patch.
> 
> Are you sure that nrv2b is better than powerful lzma or bzip2? Do you
> have benchmarks on this point? If you demonstrate me that nrv2b is a
> good choice I can consider to make the patch for the community... I
> have an application that has a very small flash memory... nrv2b should
> be a choice...
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> luigi
> 
> 
> > Thanks for your help
> > Avinash
> > 
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
> > To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
> > Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:19:36 PM
> > Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression
> > 
> > Hi Avinash,
> > 
> > I'm not undestanding if you want compress the U-Boot code or if you
> > want compress the uImage image.
> > Anyway, I don't know the nrv2b algorithm, can you give me any links?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > 
> > luigi
> > 
> > Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 13.54 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
> > scritto: 
> > 
> > > Hi All
> > > 
> > > I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very small flash
> > > memory and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2b
> > > algo for that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression
> > > info in the u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot
> > > header too.
> > > 
> > > Thanks
> > > Avinash
> > > 
> > > 
> > > __________________________________________________________________
> > > 
> > > 
> > > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> > > Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. 
> > > 
> > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> > > It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> > > just about anything Open Source.
> > > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
> > > _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users at lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Ing. Luigi Mantellini
> > Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
> > Via Canzo, 4 
> > 20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
> > Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
> > Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
> > E-mail:
> > luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ____________________________________________________________________
> > 
> > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> > Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
> 
> 
> Ing. Luigi Mantellini
> Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
> Via Canzo, 4 
> 20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
> Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
> Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
> E-mail:
> luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.


Ing. Luigi Mantellini
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
Via Canzo, 4 
20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
E-mail: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com


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[U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression

[Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini]

Hi Avinash,

You should check the nand_spl and openand_ipl directories to see
examples how to start u-boot from a not bootable memory (like nand).

Best regards,

luigi


On mer, 2008-04-02 at 14:26 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia wrote:
> Hi Luig
> 
> Thank you for your mail. I actually have two questions:
>      1. What is the format of u-boot header? Can you refer me to some
>         documentation?
>      2. I want to compress u-boot. I have picked up nrv2b.c from
>         Koders.com which is in use by many people :). I couldn't
>         understand how it does encoding and decoding. I wanted to use
>         this algo and do compression and decompression of my binaries.
>         You can search google for nrv2b.c and you will get it from
>         Koder.com.
> Thanks for your help
> Avinash
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini <luigi.mantellini@idf-hit.com>
> To: Avinash Vijayvergia <avinashs36@yahoo.com>
> Cc: u-boot-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:19:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [U-Boot-Users] help - u-boot header & compression
> 
> Hi Avinash,
> 
> I'm not undestanding if you want compress the U-Boot code or if you
> want compress the uImage image.
> Anyway, I don't know the nrv2b algorithm, can you give me any links?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> luigi
> 
> Il giorno mer, 02/04/2008 alle 13.54 -0700, Avinash Vijayvergia ha
> scritto: 
> > Hi All
> > 
> > I am working on AT91SAM9260 ARM9 core. I have very small flash
> > memory and hence need to compress the u-boot. I have picked nrv2b
> > algo for that. Can someone suggest me how to put the compression
> > info in the u-boot header. I want to know the details of u-boot
> > header too.
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Avinash
> > 
> > 
> > ____________________________________________________________________
> > 
> > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> > Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> > It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> > just about anything Open Source.
> > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace
> > _______________________________________________ U-Boot-Users mailing list U-Boot-Users at lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/u-boot-users
> 
> Ing. Luigi Mantellini
> Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
> Via Canzo, 4 
> 20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI)
> Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
> Fax: +39 02 5167 2459
> E-mail:
> luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of
> Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
-- 
     ______       Luigi Mantellini
   .'______'.     R&D - Software
  (.'      '.)    Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
  ( :=----=: )    Via Canzo, 4
  ('.______.')    20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI), Italy
   '.______.'     Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813
                  Fax:  +39 02 5167 2459
Ind.  Dial Face   Email: luigi.mantellini at idf-hit.com
www.idf-hit.com   GPG fingerprint: 3DD1 7B71 FBDF 6376 1B4A
                                   B003 175F E979 907E 1650