Re: Booting BeagleBone Enhanced (update u-boot)

[Brook Milligan <brook%nmsu.edu@localhost>]

> On Jun 30, 2022, at 3:08 PM, Michael van Elst <mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 02:51:20PM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> 
>> I definitely have not succeeded with u-boot 2018.11 and any version of NetBSD-current, even with pressing the boot select button to avoid whatever is on the MMC.  Even with 2018.11, though, mine attempts to boot via EFI.  I wonder if you are somehow avoiding EFI, even with. current and 2018.11.  
> 
> I have removed bootarm.efi and put a uEnv.txt file on the SD card that
> overrides the embedded logic.
> 
> Once I found that the embedded logic would e.g. look for a bootscript
> (boot.scr) but that boot scripts are deprecated and disabled in that
> u-boot version, I stopped searching for a sane configuration.

OK, it seems that there is in fact no inconsistency.  I believe everyone booting a BBB is using a custom boot script, presumably the functional equivalent of what I mentioned here [1].  I have so far heard of nobody who has successfully booted one with stock u-boot 2018.11 as in pkgsrc, which for me fails to run bootarm.efi.

As noted, updating to u-boot 2022.04, installed with installboot(8), boots fine for me using the stock bootarm.efi, which is also used for all other evbarm boards.

Unless there are counterexamples, I will update the u-boot package as planned.

> N.B. I believe boot scripts that are encoded into a binary blob
> (boot.scr.uimg) will still work, but we haven't packaged the tools
> to create them.

Yes, boot.scr is created from boot.cmd when the firmware files are populated.  See  distrib/utils/embedded/conf/armv7.conf for the step that does this.  You can of course create any boot script this way to customize it.  However, I believe that the u-boot hook for loading boot.scr is no longer in the environment, at least for the current BBB configuration.

Cheers,
Brook

[1] http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm/2022/06/26/msg007703.html