ESPRESSObin Firmware/Bootloader

[bschnei]

Hi all, I came upon a few threads in this forum while working on the bootloader for my ESPRESSObin Ultra. I noticed all of the warnings here about CPU frequency (https://www.armbian.com/espressobin/#), and I think this community might be interested in the work I'm doing.

 

I've have an ESPRESSObin Ultra which ships from Globalscale with old, buggy, and unmaintained firmware. I think the old firmware could explain a lot of the issues users have reported here with the V7. I forked the old factory firmware build script from Globalscale and moved it all to up-to-date, upstream projects: https://github.com/bschnei/ebu-bootloader

I believe with some small modifications, it is possible to also build an up-to-date bootloader for other Globalscale devices that also use the Armada 37XX SoC, for example the ESPRESSObin V7.

 

I currently use Arch Linux ARM on my device and have notified their community as well: https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=16746

One of the issues I can confirm has been fixed is EFI booting from U-Boot. Fixing this means we can use U-Boot Standard Boot (bootflow scan) to load user-friendly EFI apps like systemd-boot, GRUB, etc. This significantly streamlines the boot process eliminating the need for u-boot to load separate kernel, initramfs, and device tree files. This also makes packaging it a lot easier too.

 

It also means your bootloader becomes configurable from the OS which is really nice because it means your distro of choice can configure the bootloader instead of requiring users to configure U-Boot manually. I'm not familiar with Armbian, but I think it ships with systemd-boot (?) which has an EFI application that gives you a user friendly way to control device booting. GRUB has a similar capability.

 

Please send me a note if you are interested in testing firmware for the ESPRESSObin V7 or Ultra.

[Pali]

cc: @ManoftheSea @y52 you can be interested in this.

[y52]

Hi! Thanks for mentioning me. I've just noticed your message accidentally.
It is indeed an interesting u-boot development. My both ESPRESSObin V5 and V7 are in production now. I can make some testing once I program their replacement. But no schedule has been fixed as yet pending acquiring a new board.

[bschnei]

Hi @y52, I've been using the bootloader builds from my repo above on my ESPRESSObin Ultra for quite some time now. Not only do they have up-to-date U-boot, but frequency scaling works perfectly. I'm not very familiar with the V5 and V7 variants, but I think the V7 has the same CPU (possibly different memory).

 

> hostnamectl
 Static hostname: espressobin-ultra
       Icon name: computer-embedded
         Chassis: embedded
      Machine ID: 2ba0ba22c6164c
         Boot ID: 514bc8387b7847
Operating System: Arch Linux
          Kernel: Linux 6.17.3-1-a3700
    Architecture: arm64
 Hardware Vendor: globalscale
  Hardware Model: Globalscale Marvell ESPRESSOBin Ultra Board
Firmware Version: 2025.10-ge50b1e871501
   Firmware Date: Wed 2025-10-01
    Firmware Age: 1month

 

Edited Friday at 10:26 PM by bschnei

[y52]

I believe you have managed to overcome the majour Espressobin culprits, i.e. frequency scaling resulting in instability. It was a deadlock for me in the kernel choice and uboot frequency build version. At some moment I was compelled flashing uboot with frequency downgraded to 1GHz and 800 MHz in order to get stable setup for production. Good catch!
Your use of Arch Linux is also interesting. Which flavor have you installed ? Is it from 
https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/marvell/espressobin ?
I routinely out of curiosity try alternative builds for testing and comparison when making new setups despite that Armbian remains a preferred one so far with general score of usability.

Edited 14 hours ago by y52

[y52]

I've recently encountered when generating rsa keys low entropy available to OS on espressobin.
You mention that "The hardware random number generator contained in the Cortex-M3 coprocessor was not available to the OS."
It may explain the reason. Which entropy numbers do you reach now with the fixed u-boot ? 

[bschnei]

DVFS has been working well for me on two devices for over a year now. Linux accepted my patch to re-enable 1.2Ghz in 6.15.

 

I build my own Arch packages, but I started with ALARM. I didn't like the way they packaged the kernel and it wasn't being maintained. There are a few of us working on bringing Arch to aarch64. You'll find us on IRC. Libera.chat #archlinux-ports The ALARM project is a completely independent project of Arch Linux (despite the confusing name).

 

I have no issues with random number generation. It was actually fixed by this project: https://gitlab.nic.cz/turris/mox-boot-builder which builds one component of the bootloader. So I use that project (instead of Marvell) for that part of the bootloader.

Edited 11 hours ago by bschnei