[U-Boot] Bug#897671: u-boot does not work on sheevaplug

[Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org>]

On 2018-05-05, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Sat, May 05, 2018 at 04:04:08PM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
>> Markus Krebs discovered that the sheevaplug target has again grown and
>> installation overlaps where the u-boot env is saved since u-boot
>> ~2017.09. Running saveenv overwrites u-boot, and installing u-boot
>> overwrites any prior environment settings.
>> 
>> More detail on the bug report in Debian:
>> 
>>   https://bugs.debian.org/897671
>> 
>> We don't carry any patches for the sheevaplug u-boot target in Debian,
>> so this is likely also an issue upstream. Who are the current
>> maintainers for sheevaplug in u-boot upstream?
>> 
>> A brief summary of the current findings:
>> 
>> On 2018-05-05, Markus Krebs wrote:
>> > Am 05.05.2018 um 20:36 schrieb Markus Krebs:
...
>> > but the environment shouldn't start at 0x80000 when u-boot.kwb > 524 KB; 
>> > in this case 'saveenv' overwrites u-boot (?).
>> > Changing 0x80000 to 0xa0000 helps ; I compiled a u-boot.kwb from the 
>> > so-modified sources, and now I can start Debian fine.
>> 
>> It looks like it was bumped from 0x60000 to 0x80000 in 2014:
>> 
>>   http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=commit;h=4dfb0e4d3e75763d6fbe8788316bea9ba23e8e01
>> 
>> If 0x80000 isn't enough, there might be some features in the config to
>> experiment with removing, or it may need to be bumped again.
>
> I've added the maintainer to the list as well.  I would suggest looking
> for things to trim out, perhaps CMD_MEMTEST ?

Thanks for the suggestsions. CMD_MEMTEST wasn't present, but disabling
EFI_LOADER made u-boot 2018.05 go from 592k down to 548k. There's not a
*lot* left to disable in the config, but that's a significant start...

On a related note, I'm wondering if EFI_LOADER should only be enabled
with SYS_ARM_ARCH >= 7 by default, as many of the earlier arm systems
tend to be space-constrained, and those that aren't could enable it on a
case-by-case basis.


> Also, a patch to make it a link error when we exceed the size allowed
> would be great, so that in the future we catch this when it happens.
> Thanks!

Will look into it, although would be happy if someone beats me to it. :)


live well,
  vagrant
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