write u-boot to nand

[Thomas131 0]

Hello!
I have an Cubietruck with an attached SATA-Disk. I would like to use the board without an SD-Card (I don't see why I should use one when I have a nand and a Disk). I can boot u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin using FEL and Armbian boots successfully. I can write stuff to nand, but I didn't manage to write an working u-boot to nand. Is the SPL-Version the correct one or the one without? Do I have to write to something special like MBR? Where does the BROM search for the bootloader? Does it parse the partition-table?

Thanks in advance!

[phelum 2]

Hi,

I suspect you'll need a special version of u-boot and I don't know if such a version exists.  The NAND boot process requires boot0 in blocks 0 and 1, and boot1 in blocks 2 to 7, and the kernel and u-boot-bin in the first partition.  The MBR and partitions are all in the "logical" section of NAND which is after the reserved (maybe 12) blocks in NAND.  The blocks in this logical section aren't necessarily where they appear to be due to bad block relocation and wear levelling.

 

The problem I see with booting from NAND is that unless you have a kernel that can access the NAND then you will have the situation where you can't update your kernel.  So I stick to the old 3.4 kernel for my NAND boot systems but I'm stuck with running wheezy here and this is becoming a major disadvantage.

 

The good thing about an SD-card is that if it packs up it's easy to replace.  Maybe it is the better option.  However, if there is a u-boot-bin version that will load the kernel from NAND then maybe it's worth a try.  This would help if the onboard SD card reader packs up.

 

Cheers,

Steven