On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 01:01:56AM +0200, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote: > On 05/20/2018 09:15 PM, Karsten Merker wrote: > > On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 02:57:41PM +0200, Heinrich Schuchardt wrote: > > > >> Package: flash-kernel > >> Version: 3.94 > >> Severity: normal > >> Tags: patch > >> > >> Add 60 missing database entries for arm64 boards > >> supported both by U-Boot and by Linux: [...] > > many thanks for the patch. Just to make sure that we don't run > > into problems later on: do all these boards really use u-boot's > > config_distro_bootcmd.h and thereby work properly with > > bootscr.uboot-generic? > > > > When looking at the defconfigs for several of these systems, I > > see e.g. CONFIG_BOOTARGS settings that don't really match what I > > would expect for systems using config_distro_bootcmd.h. > > Three random examples: > > > > - r8a77995_draak_defconfig: > > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttySC0,115200 rw root=/dev/nfs > > nfsroot=192.168.0.1:/export/rfs ip=192.168.0.20" > > > > - ls1088ardb_sdcard_qspi_defconfig: > > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/ram0 > > earlycon=uart8250,mmio,0x21c0500 ramdisk_size=0x3000000 > > default_hugepagesz=2m hugepagesz=2m hugepages=256" > > > > - hikey_defconfig: > > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttyAMA0,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p9 rw" [,,,] > For a board to be able to benefit from flash-kernel U-Boot must: > > - be capable to load and execute boot.scr > - provide the booti command > - allow the definition of the following environment variables: > - devtype, devnum, partition > - fdtfile > - kernel_addr_r > - fdt_addr_r > - ramdisk_addr_r > > In your examples above I could not find any evidence that U-Boot cannot > be configured and built to fulfill these requirements. > > For instance build > > make r8a77995_draak_defconfig > make menuconfig > CONFIG_DISTRO_DEFAULTS=y > CONFIG_BOOTARGS="console=ttySC0,115200" > CONFIG_ENV_IS_IN_MMC=y (this is a default value) > make -j6 > > Setup missing environment variables interactively and save them to MMC > and you can rely on flash-kernel for booting. > > ls1088ardb_sdcard_qspi_defconfig and hikey_defconfig select > CONFIG_DISTRO_DEFAULTS=y. CONFIG_BOOTARGS has to be reconfigured. > > This patch is only about providing flash-kernel for the boards. It is > not about providing U-Boot configured to match flash-kernel's requirements. > > I think that even for boards for which we do not provide U-Boot as a > Debian package we should allow the usage of flash-kernel without setting > up a local override for the machine database (/etc/flash-kernel/db).
Hello, our policy has always been to only add an entry for an armhf/arm64 system to the flash-kernel database if this entry works out of the box with the default mainline u-boot configuration for the respective device. Users usually expect that a system boots out of the box without having to build a non-standard u-boot configuration and modify the default environment if the system is listed in the flash-kernel machine db. I'm open to arguments to the contrary, but for now I believe that is makes sense to keep this policy. Having to build u-boot with an undocumented non-standard configuration and having to modify various non-obvious parts of the default environment (which possibly includes having to find out the platform-specific kernel_addr_r, fdt_addr_r and ramdisk_addr_r values for systems where they are not already defined in the default environment) to make the system boot is an extremely high and completely unexpected hurdle for a "normal" user, and I believe that we would do a large part of our userbase a misservice by including entries that do not work out of the box. For somebody who has the knowledge to perform all the aforementioned steps on the u-boot side, it's usually easy to also add a corresponding local entry to /etc/flash-kernel/db. I'm CCing debian-arm for further opinions on the matter. Regards, Karsten -- Gem. Par. 28 Abs. 4 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz widerspreche ich der Nutzung sowie der Weitergabe meiner personenbezogenen Daten für Zwecke der Werbung sowie der Markt- oder Meinungsforschung.
