u-boot update from running system

[erazor]

Hi there,

 

I got some NanoPi-NEO running and need to update the kernel, modules and dtb's.

 

With 4.18 the Ethernet does not seem to get started correctly.  I noticed a change in u-boot and the newer Armbian releases have Ethernet-Support in u-boot.

 

So my basic idea is to not just copy the kernel files but also update u-boot via dd command.

 

I suppose there are at least 3 regions in the image:

1. the partition table which I don't want to change.

2. the u-boot configuration which I'd like to keep.

3. the u-boot runtime.

 

So for #2 and #3 I'll need an image file. I'm trying to set-up a build environment for Armbian but what I'm probably missing is the offset and count parameters for dd.

 

Is there some kind of "HowTo update u-boot for H3" somewhere? Thanks for your help.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, erazor said:

Is there some kind of "HowTo update u-boot for H3" somewhere? Thanks for your help.

If you use armbian, this is all done standard way, via packages. We have a post-install script which does the actual update. If you want to understand details about the boot process, peek here .

[erazor]

I simply copied the uboot stuff from an existing image:

# dd if=mmcblk0_new of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 skip=8 seek=8 count=$((1024-8))

 

I got the numbers from http://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_card :

1 block = 1024 bytes (-> bs=1024)

first 8 blocks is MBR + partition-table (-> skip=8 seek=8)

first partition starts at 1024 blocks (-> count=$((1024-8)))

[martinayotte]

Don't do "skip" and "seek" on the same command, use "skip" only when doing backup and "seek" only on the restore.