CM-FX6: U-Boot: Building Images

Overview

CM-FX6 firmware consists of two components: Secondary Program Loader (SPL) and U-Boot. Both components are based on U-Boot source code. SPL is the bootstrap utility invoked by the CPU internal boot ROM code of the i.MX6 SoC. SPL performs minimal hardware initialization and loads U-Boot from the same boot device. U-Boot initializes hardware modules necessary for system boot and loads the operating system.

Building Firmware images for CM-FX6

Cross-Compiler

There are several options for cross-compilation toolchain setup. You can either compile your cross-compiler or use an already built cross-compiler. The cross-compiler should support the ARM embedded-application binary interface ("EABI")

• Pre-built toolchain (recommended):
  • Sourcery CodeBench Lite
• Tools for creating cross-compilers:
  • Crosstool-ng: Builds a cross-compiler from source. Non-distribution specific.
  • Crossdev: Gentoo's cross-compiler builder. Needs Gentoo.

Getting U-Boot sources

There are two ways to get U-Boot sources that can be used as a baseline for CM-FX6 SPL and U-Boot. You can create a copy of "Das U-Boot" source tree or download a snapshot and extract it. We assume that you have created /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot directory for CM-FX6 u-boot development.

Snapshot download

• Download v2014.04 snapshot with your web browser.
• Extract the downloaded archive u-boot-dda0dbfc69f3d560c87f5be85f127ed862ea6721.tar.bz2

cd /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot
tar xvf /path/to/downloaded/u-boot-dda0dbfc69f3d560c87f5be85f127ed862ea6721.tar.bz2
mv u-boot u-boot-cm-fx6

This will create /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot/u-boot-cm-fx6 directory containing U-Boot source code tree.

• Apply the CM-FX6 patch

cd /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot/u-boot-cm-fx6
patch -p1 < /path/to/cm-fx6-u-boot/u-boot/u-boot-v2014.04-cm-fx6-1.patch

Git clone

• Install git version control system.
• Create a clone of U-Boot tree

cd /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot
git clone git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git u-boot-cm-fx6

• Create a branch for CM-FX6 development. The CM-FX6 patches are generated vs. v2014.04 tag (dda0dbfc69f3d560c87f5be85f127ed862ea6721 commit) in the U-Boot tree. It is recommended to use exactly the same baseline to avoid merge conflicts.

git checkout -b cm-fx6-dev v2014.04

• Apply the CM-FX6 patch

cd /home/development/cm-fx6/u-boot/u-boot-cm-fx6
git apply /path/to/cm-fx6-u-boot/u-boot/u-boot-v2014.04-cm-fx6-1.patch

Building the firmware images

• First, compile both SPL and U-Boot. The following commands create the spl/u-boot-spl.bin and u-boot.img binaries (along with other image types):

export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-linux-eabi-
make mrproper
make cm_fx6_config && make

• Invoke mkimage on the SPL binary to attach the IVT header required by the i.MX6 boot ROM code to the SPL binary. This generates a new image file spl.

./tools/mkimage -n board/compulab/cm_fx6/imximage.cfg -T imximage -e 0x00908000 -d spl/u-boot-spl.bin spl

• Create the combined image by creating a 0xFF initialized 512KB cm-fx6-firmware file, and writing the spl and u-boot.img data to the appropriate offsets within the firmware file.

dd if=/dev/zero count=500 bs=1K | tr '\000' '\377' > cm-fx6-firmware
dd if=spl of=cm-fx6-firmware bs=1K seek=1 conv=notrunc && dd if=u-boot.img of=cm-fx6-firmware bs=1K seek=64 conv=notrunc

• You can now install the cm-fx6-firmware file into an SD card or CM-FX6 SPI flash.

See also

• CM-FX6: U-Boot: Firmware Overview
• CM-FX6: U-Boot: Firmware Update
• CM-FX6: U-Boot: Creating a bootable SD card
• U-Boot quick reference
• U-Boot images
• U-Boot documentation