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====== Introduction ======

So, I (Stephen Warren/srwarren/swarren) just got an AC100 and started hacking on it, intending to do stuff
like getting mainline U-Boot and a mainline kernel running. I learned a
lot, and figured out some stuff that isn't in the wiki, even if it is in
people's heads... So, here's a brain-dump in case it's useful to the
general community:

====== Tools ======

I used nvflash and bootloader.bin (a/k/a fastboot.bin) from the
Linux4Tegra alpha release (Harmony version of bootloader.bin). Other
versions might work.

====== Backing up ======

The current wiki backup examples use --read (a partition). To me, there
are some slight disadvantages to this, since it'll be more difficult to
restore from individual partition images if you've modified or broken
your partition table. I chose to do a plain byte-for-byte backup of the
entire flash.

nvflash's --rawdeviceread option can do this, but has one problem: It
fails if asked to read the entire flash (it's too big for one dump), so
I had to run multiple nvflash commands in sequence to grab the MMC
content in chunks:

#!/bin/bash
  
  sectors=3879936
  sectors_per=131072
  
  sectors_read=0
  block_id=0
  downloads=
  while [ ${sectors_read} -lt ${sectors} ]; do
      block_id_str=`printf %03d ${block_id}`
      f=ac100-image-${block_id_str}.bin
      sectors_this=$(( ${sectors} - ${sectors_read} ))
      if [ ${sectors_this} -gt ${sectors_per} ]; then
          sectors_this=${sectors_per}
      fi
      downloads="${downloads} --rawdeviceread"
      downloads="${downloads} ${sectors_read} ${sectors_this} ${f}"
      sectors_read=$((${sectors_read} + ${sectors_this}))
      block_id=$((${block_id} + 1))
  done
   
  set -x
  
  sudo ./nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --getpartitiontable ac100-pt.txt
  sudo ./nvflash -r ${downloads}

(For correctness, you should probably add "--odmdata 0x200c0000" to all
the nvflash commands. See
http://nv-tegra.nvidia.com/gitweb/?p=linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=arch/arm/mach-tegra/odm_kit/query/harmony/tegra_devkit_custopt.h;h=1ec7010911454f19a5018952fd245785a62c59ad;hb=0e52d7fe25b11a656c376a37890be219470661fb
for details)

To restore your MMC to its original state, you should be able to use the
exact same script; just replacing --rawdeviceread with --rawdevicewrite
(also there's no need to run the --getpartitiontable commands when
restoring)

====== Extracting a usable BCT ======

The BCT is 4080 bytes long at the start of MMC. To extract it, run:

dd if=ac100-image-000.bin of=ac100.bct bs=4080 count=1

The BCT that's on the device contains information about the location of
the bootloader within the MMC. In order to use the BCT for purposes such
as flashing a complete new custom partition table, or a new bootloader,
you'll need to create a copy of the BCT, and remove this information, so
that nvflash has space to add it back when using writing it to the device:

cp ac100.bct ac100.bct.orig
  dd if=/dev/zero of=ac100.bct seek=2704 bs=48 count=1 conv=notrunc

If you don't nvflash might fail later with e.g.:

bootloader status: BCT is full; no more bootloaders can be added (code: 16) message: nverror:0x4 (0x4) flags: 0

For more details on the BCT format, see the cbootimage project on
gitorious; it creates boot images for Tegra: https://gitorious.org/cbootimage.

====== Mainline U-Boot status ======

(as of 2011/11/19)

Mainline U-Boot has some Tegra support now. There's quite a bit of
activity going on to upstream more. I posted preliminary support for the
AC100; see http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/126617/.

This supports: UART console over UARTA (JP1), SD card in the SD slot,
built-in MMC flash. There is no (nvec) keyboard or display support for
Tegra in mainline U-Boot at present. You may be able to crib display
support from the ChromeOS U-Boot.

My patch relies on a bunch of other patches in patchwork. Below is a
list of what I have in my local branch. Not all of this is necessarily
required, but much is at least for patch context. These may be found in
patchwork linked above.

<code>
tegra2: Add support for Paz00 (Toshiba AC100)
tegra2: Fix conflicting pinmux for UARTA
MAINTAINERS: Fix my email address
Revert "mmc: retry the cmd8 to meet 74 clocks requirement in the spec"
mmc: Implement card detection.
tegra2: Add common Avionic Design Tamonten support.
tegra2: Move tegra2_mmc_init() prototype to public header.
tegra2: Change CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE to 0x00108000.
tegra2: Always build with USE_PRIVATE_LIBGCC=yes.
tegra2: Fix out-of-tree build for Ventana.
tegra2: Don't use board pointer before it is set up
tegra2: Remove unneeded 'dynamic ram size' message
tegra2: Remove unused low-level Tegra2 UART code
tegra2: Remove unneeded config option
tegra2: Remove unneeded boot code
tegra2: Enable instruction cache
arm: Move CP15 init out of cpu_init_crit()
tegra2: Simplify tegra_start() boot path
tegra2: Add arch_cpu_init() to fire up Cortex-A9
image: Don't detect XIP images as overlapping.
image: Implement IH_TYPE_KERNEL_NOLOAD
tegra2: Use new GPIO APIs in gpio_config_uart()
tegra2: Add support for Ventana
tegra2: Modify MMC driver to handle power and cd GPIOs
tegra2: Move board_mmc_init into board files
disk: part_efi: fix regression due to incorrect buffer usage
</code>
====== Running an updated U-Boot from RAM ======

nvflash can be used to download U-Boot directly into RAM and run it.
This saves screwing around with flashing the MMC. The command to do this is:

sudo ./nvflash --bl ~/git_wa/u-boot/u-boot.bin --sync

Note that nvflash will attempt to communicate with the downloaded code
over USB. This will fail to work, and nvflash will hang until the USB
cable is removed. However, U-Boot will actually be running just fine.

====== Burning U-Boot to MMC ======

You can use this command:

sudo ./nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --bct ac100.bct --odmdata 0x200c0000 --download 4 ~/git_wa/u-boot/u-boot.bin

Note: This works for me now. It did not work for me before when ALL of
the following were true:

a) Using original partition table.
b) Missing the --odmdata option in the command above.
c) Using the BCT as read from the device, without removing the
bootloader information from it as described above in "Extracting a
usable BCT".

I don't know which of those things made it start working.

Note: You can't update the bootloader using --rawdevicewrite to the EBT
partition's location, because certain information about the bootloader
(such as a crypto hash of its binary) is stored in the BCT. --download
updates this, whereas --rawdevicewrite would not.

====== Flashing a custom partition table (and updated bootloader) ======

On my Tegra machines, I typically write only the bootloader to internal
flash, and store the kernel and filesystem on an SD card. This way,
testing new kernels is as simple as writing a file to an SD card, and I
can share it across all my machines. I wanted a similar partition setup
on my AC100 as on my other machines to keep things consistent. To do
this, I created a "flash.cfg" more in line with those from Linux4Tegra
alpha:

[device]
  type=hsmmc
  instance=3
  
  [partition]
  name=BCT
  id=2
  type=boot_config_table
  allocation_policy=sequential
  filesystem_type=basic
  size=4096
  file_system_attribute=0
  partition_attribute=0
  allocation_attribute=8
  percent_reserved=0
  
  [partition]
  name=PT
  id=3
  type=partition_table
  allocation_policy=sequential
  filesystem_type=basic
  size=4096
  file_system_attribute=0
  partition_attribute=0
  allocation_attribute=8
  percent_reserved=0
  
  [partition]
  name=EBT
  id=4
  type=bootloader
  allocation_policy=sequential
  filesystem_type=basic
  size=1048576
  file_system_attribute=0
  partition_attribute=0
  allocation_attribute=8
  percent_reserved=0
  filename=u-boot.bin

and ran the following nvflash command to write this to the AC100:
 
  bin=bootloader.bin
  cfg=flash.cfg
  bct=ac100.bct
  odm=0x200c0000
  
  sudo ./nvflash \
    --bct ${bct} \
    --setbct \
    --odmdata ${odm} \
    --configfile ${cfg} \
    --create \
    --bl ${bin} \
    --go

You could expand flash.cfg to add an extra partition covering the rest
device if you wanted to put the Linux install on the MMC here. The
kernel would need support for the "tegraparts" command-line option for
this to work (mainline doesn't have this, although the existing AC100
Ubuntu kernels do)

Note: I wrote my flash.cfg above to fit within the first boot sector, as
described in the next section.

====== MMC boot sectors ======

The MMC device has two 1MiB "boot sectors" at the start.

Note that the term "boot sectors" comes from a flash memory background,
and really has nothing to do with the Tegra boot process as far as I know.

nvflash's sector numbers begin at the start of the first boot sector,
continue through the first boot sector, through the second boot sectors,
and finally through the balance of the flash. I think that nvflash has
no knowledge at all of these boot sectors.

At a HW level, it's plausible these have more error-redundancy, since
"boot sectors" are typically used to store important things such as boot
loaders.

At a SW level, if I understand correctly, these are more of an
informational construct. However, both (mainline) U-Boot and the
(mainline) Linux kernel honor this information when accessing the device.

In particular, the U-Boot command to read the first sector in the MMC:

mmc dev 0
  mmc read ${loadaddr} 0 1

actually reads from the first sector of the "general" area /after/ the
boot-sectors. However, you can access the boot-sectors by providing an extra parameter to "mmc dev":

mmc dev 0 1 # First boot sector
  mmc dev 0 2 # Second boot sector

If an MMC device had "general purpose" partitions built-in, I imagine there would be more legal values for the second parameter to "mmc dev".

Equally, when (mainline) Linux boots, it creates the following device nodes:

/dev/mmcblk1boot0 # Boot sector 0:   0..1 MiB
  /dev/mmcblk1boot1 # Boot sector 1:   1..2 MiB
  /dev/mmcblk1      # Everything else: 2..  MiB

If an MMC device had "general purpose" partitions built-in, extra devices would be exposed:

/dev/mmcblk1gp0
  /dev/mmcblk1gp1
  /dev/mmcblk1gp2
  /dev/mmcblk1gp3

Any or all of those Linux devices may have partition tables, which would space device names such as /dev/mmcblk1p1, /dev/mmcblk1boot0p1, /dev/mmcblk1gp0p1.

Bear this in mind when trying to validate Flash content written by nvflash from U-Boot or Linux!

====== Partition table support in U-Boot and the kernel ======

Neither mainline U-Boot nor the mainline kernel support Tegra's custom
partition scheme. Moving forward, we could:

* Upstream support to both U-Boot and the kernel. If we do this, I'd at
least suggest having the kernel parse the partition table rather than
using the tegraparts= command-line option.

* Use something standard like GPT. I'd suggest this.

====== Using a GPT partition table ======

Given the existence of MMC boot-sectors, and the fact both U-Boot and Linux expose separate devices for each of the boot partitions and the rest of the MMC, I suggest creating a GPT at 2M into the device (i.e. at the start of the main portion of the flash after the boot sectors and covering until the end of the device. Then, write the BCT, Tegra PT, and bootloader into the first (or both) bootsector(s). This keeps the GPT-based and Tegra-PT-based portions of the flash completely separate. An advantage here is that the BCT can be stored right at the start of flash, which is where it's supposed to be.

A diagram:

Additional background: Some/many Tegra devices have a relatively small NAND or SPI flash that's laid out with just the BCT, Tegra PT, EBT sections, i.e. the content of "boot 0" above. Any Linux filesystems are then stored in MMC, and laid out in a standard fashion (e.g. GPT, MBR) without regard for the content of the NAND/SPI boot flash.

You can create this by:

Write the BCT, Tegra PT, bootloader to flash as I described above.

Create a disk image for the "Rest" by:

dd if=/dev/zero of=image.bin bs=16384 count=484864
  
  parted image.bin
    unit s
    mklabel gpt
    # This covers the whole rest of the MMC, but isn't aligned;
    # I'm not sure why alignment matters
    mkpart primary 34 15515614
    name 1 Linux
    quit
 
The following writes the 34 GPT (512-byte) sectors to the start of the
"rest" part of the MMC:

sudo ./nvflash --bl bootloader.bin --rawdevicewrite 1024 9 image.bin

Note: (9 * 2048 bytes per sector) / 512 bytes per sector is 36, two more
than the 34-sector size of the GPT.

You should also really extract the last 34 sectors of image.bin to
another file, and write them to the very end of the MMC too, so the
backup GPT is there. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader!

With this setup, you could generate a new BCT/PT/U-Boot image and dd it
directly into /dev/mmcblk1boot0 when updating from Linux. Of course,
this is only for U-Boot updates from a running Linux system, which would
probably be rare. In order to write to /dev/mmcblkXbootY, you'll need disable the "force readonly" flag for the boot partition(s) using "echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblkXbootY/force_ro". See http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.mmc/10115.

If on other Tegra systems, the MMC doesn't have these boot sectors,
you'll have to create the GPT right at the start of the MMC. This means
the BCT must be put somewhere else. Note that NVIDIA will certainly not
provide support for this configuration; the Tegra Boot ROM documentation
states that the BCT MUST be at offset zero into the boot device.
However, moving the BCT does appear to work in practice, since the boot
ROM (at least on Tegra20) searches through the device for a valid BCT.
Note that the TrimSlice firmware updater SD card images use this
technique, but with a regular PC/MBR partition table.

+-----+---------------------------------------+
  | MMC | Primary GPT                           |
  |     | GPT Partition 1 "BCT" at sector 256   |
  |     | GPT Partition 2 "BOOTLOADER"          |
  |     | GPT partition 3 "LINUX"               |
  |     | ...                                   |
  |     | Backup GPT                            |
  +-----+---------------------------------------+
 
Notes: I chose sector 256 for the start of the BCT partition (i.e. 128K
into flash) to match the location that (the "trimslice" branch of)
cbootimage uses when moving the BCT (search for
MMC_SECONDARY_BCT_LOCATION_IN_BLOCKS in the code). Also, I /think/ the Tegra boot
ROM searches for the BCT at the start of each "journal block" on the
MMC, and apparently they're 128K in size.

To generate this kind of image, create and partition image.bin just like
above (but remember to use the appropriate size to match your MMC). In
order to install the BCT and boot-loader into the image, you'll need to:

a) Use bct_dump (from cbootimage) to create ac100-cboot.cfg.

b) Edit ac100-cboot.cfg to add the following line at the end:

BootLoader    = u-boot.bin,0x00108000,0x00108000,Complete;

c) Use cbootimage to generate an MMC image (so, in the "trimslice"
branch, MMC_SECONDARY_BCT_LOCATION_IN_BLOCKS is applied), using
ac100.bct and the u-boot.bin you desire.

cbootimage -d ac100-cboot.cfg cboot.bin

(Note: Use of cbootimage is required in order to write the correct
bootloader sector numbers and verification hash into the BCT)

d) Extract portions of the cbootimage result and write them to image.bin:

# BCT
  dd if=cboot.bin of=image.bin bs=1024 count=16 skip=128 seek=128 conv=notrunc
  # U-Boot
  dd if=cboot.bin of=image.bin bs=1024 count=1024 skip=144 seek=144 conv=notrunc

You can probably just write u-boot.bin directly into image.bin rather
than extracting it from cboot.bin first, but I wanted to make sure I
copied the entire partition, in case the verification hash in the BCT
included any padding sectors after the bootloader image.

Now, copy the relevant parts of image.bin onto MMC. You'll need to copy
quite a few more than 34 (9) sectors this time...

With this setup, I imagine there would be some tool running on Linux
that read the current BCT from /dev/mmcblk1p1, updated it based on
knowledge of the BOOTLOADER partition's location and new u-boot.bin
content, and then wrote it back direct to /dev/mmcblk1p1, and wrote
u-boot.bin direct to /dev/mmcblk1p2. Of course, this is only for U-Boot
updates from a running Linux system, which would probably be rare.

In either partioning setup, I'd expect U-Boot to use ext2load to load
the kernel from /boot in the first GPT partition, or something like
that. Therefore, a kernel update would be as simple as copying a new
file over e.g. /boot/vmlinux.uimg

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