Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

FWIW, the reason i'm 'conflicting' is to avoid broken devices and unforseen situations. The kernel in the 'uboot-pr13' package should only be used with PR1.3 kernel + modules as stated in guides.

There's nothing stopping the other kernels from having a uboot-<theirkernel> variant. It's when you start mixing kernel + modules that things really break.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

lease help me .I do not what happen but a penguin show up while I was installing a full charged battery it do not time out, I can not turn off my n900 and if I remove the battery and reinstall it the penguin show up on power on.
How can go back to maemo , when I typed the command

run mmcboot it said wrong image format comand
ERROr : can not get kernel image
I want only get maemo back

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

To boot Maemo type:
run mmcboot is for booting from SD card (i.e. MeeGo).

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

i tried but it get stuck on starting kernel,,,although i did try to install meego at all i just got an update called u-boot or something like this with penguin logo,,,,nd once i switched off my mob after many days from downloading it i got this starting up screen,,,,,wt should i doooo,,,,,is there any kind of hard reset without logging in the system using keys i mean!!????

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

hey brother i had the same problem like u whit that penguin about u-boot,ok u first need a mac pc and install the program 770 flasher.u-boot doesnt allow to charge the n900 so u have to have a little bit of battery saved in ur n900 then u need to download the ""RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.19-1.002_PR_COMBINED_002_ARM.bin and put ur n900 on flash mode. i already just did it now and my n900 is "ALIVE AGAIN" .good luck.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

You do not need a mac, you can use any Windows, Linux, pretty much anything that has USB-support. And to use the 770 flasher for N900 is in no way a good solution. Go to the Maemo Wiki, get flasher-3.5 along with a firmware, preferably the newest for your region or your previous. (Or just get the global FW)

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

I had a similar issue that was resolved by removing the battery, and reinstalling it.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

nope. It's u-boot that breaks many devices.
kernel-power fixes the broken /sbin/preinit to load modules from the directory of the currently running kernel instead of /lib/modules/current. It also does not remove the modules of the stock kernel. That's why it's so simple to revert to the stock kernel by reflashing the kernel image only.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Quick instructions to install Meego, without flasher

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65673

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

I BRICKED MY Device...i installed u boot and now wen i try to boot up i get the penguin screen it tries to load the kernel...
says booting NOLO supplied kernel...
comes to starting kernel... then just shuts off
Please help!!!

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Were u not informed that its a risky install? Why did you install if you don't know what the software is going to do.

Read the Wiki for flashing the firmware.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Mine as welll..... I just did!!!!....Anyone pls help......:(

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Reflash the kernel with a normal kernel image (either stock or power) without uboot.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Looks like you did not type in "run noloboot" fast enough. You get about 10seconds before the device shutdown.

If you don't know what you're doing then this is what you'd get from installing things that had a big "WARNING" written beside it.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Yeap 10 secs so quick but, I did try to type run noloboot, Starting kernel.... then..nothing happens.......

I managed to run MeeGo only.... I cannot boot back to the old system. What should I do to get back the old maemo 5? I did remove the SD and run noloboot....and again... Starting kernel...... nothing happens....

Thanks a lot for helping me....btw any chances to speed up Meego? Mine is very very slow....Is it because of using SD card?

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

I have rebuild u-boot (Matan's version) from source.

Compiling process (native SDK on N900) has gone well, no errors only some warnings.

Unfortunately the u-boot's image obtained doesn't works on N900.

If I flash it (with attached power kernel) I obtain a corrupted screen during boot and some seconds after N900 power off (no Maemo's boot)

Why?
Where is the error during image build process ?

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Hello, I builded new U-Boot based on master U-Boot git tree from 26.08.2011 with new ali's patches. I implemented on screen BootMenu to U-Boot (it looks like Fanoush BootMenu script) which is included too.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Hi pali! I saw while searching the net some time ago that you posted a patch for uboot to allow it to boot through EMMC + support for bootmenu. Is that patch included on your u-boot? Or is this just a bootmenu + uboot. Would love the EMMC part :)

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Nevermind saw it already here

https://gitorious.org/u-boot-shr/u-b...s/nokia_rx51.h

great thanks pali! :)

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Pali, this looks promissing!
I noticed the bootmenu allows to boot from Internal eMMC or SDcard.
For eMMC it chooses mmcnum 2and for SDcard mmcnum 0. Is this correct?
Looking on the n900 I see eMMC on mmcblk0 and SDcard on mmcblk1.
So I would expect mmcnum 0 for eMMC boot and mmcnum 1 for SDcard.

Or am i Missing something?

I like to setup a sdcard with nitdroid and start it using u-boot SDcard...
Do you know how the nitdroid kernel should be 'formatted' te bea ble to boot it roperly. I expect I need to pass some kernel perms to select rootfs etc, but
I am a bit confused on how to do that...

Thanks for any help!

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

omg! Pali's uboot won't work on me. Same situation I had with matan's modified uboot. An infinite reboot loop. :(

It just won't load noloboot. don't know about others.

Coul you by chance provide a diff file for the master of uboot? or at least the source, would like to see what's wrong :(

or at least could someone with more knowledge with this look into it? Matan said this is a problem with different hardware revisions.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Source code are on gitorious: https://gitorious.org/u-boot-shr/u-b...ts/pali-master

@mirakels:
mmcnum for SD card was in ali's patch 0 and for eMMC 2. I used ali's patch, so ask ali if it is correct, I'm not sure.

Booting from SD or eMMC is done in this order:
1. try to load boot script /boot.scr from first FAT partition
2. try to load kernel image /uImage from fisrt FAT partition
3. try to load boot script /boot.scr from second FAT partition
4. try to load kernel image /uImage from second FAT partition
5. same for 3. and 4. FAT partition

... same as 1-5 but try partition type Ext

boot script is U-Boot language Hush text script converted by mkimage
uImage is kernel image generated from zImage/uImage by mkimage

@Radicalz38:
maybe it is really problem with different HW revisions. First try to only load image, not flashing!!! This prevent infinite reboot loop.

If you have a problem with booting glued kernel image, choose "U-Boot console" in menu and write "run noloboot". Then if you can write output.

Also use pr1.3 kernel image with framebuffer support (u-boot+pr1.3+fb.bin), maybe you will see some more errors in console.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Paili Radicalz38,
I still run power kernel 45. It has u-boot working fine (although with some older u-boot version:U-Boot 2010.06-00697-g61ab171-dirty (Oct 29 2010 - 04:14:37)). But If I escape the boot sequence in this u-boot I can type a few commands and then the device shuts down.
(I is not a matter of what commands I use. even without commands it shuts down after 10 seconds or so). This is not enough time to enter all the commands to specify a kernel on the sdcard manually :-(

From the kernel-power debian rules I notice that a kernel image is also run through the fiasco-gen command. Has that been done with the image.bin files you supplied Pali? maybe this is the reason for Radicalz38 reboot loop?

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

If you running old version of U-Boot without R&D mode, it should reboot your device after few seconds. It is because old version does not have implemented watchdog kicker and when device is not in R&D mode with disabled watchdog, hw reset device. New version, of cource, has this problem fixed.

fiasco-gen is program which generate fiasco images. Flasing kernel (or other part) can be done also in device without PC. But it needs to be in fiasco format. So this is reason why kernel(-power) generate fiasco image.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Thanks Pali for the exlanations!
I installed the power48 modules manually and the started the u-boot+kp48.bin using the flasher-3.5 on my laptop.
Runs fine now! So I probalby can flash the .bin without problems now :)

Only noticed I lost the /sys/class/power_supply/bq27200-0/uevent
file to get battery status info. Is this because of the I2C issues I read about in other threads/irc?

With your u-boot I probably would be able to play around booting kernels from other (sdcard) partitions. I'll play with that in the next weeks...

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Problem between BME and bq27x00_battery kernel module. For more info read kernel-power thread.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

hm played a bit with the new u-boot image and got into u-boot console
when i give the command 'mmc init' it says 'No MMC card found'.

I'm sure there is one... when let it boot with noloboot it do have access to the sdcard when when the system is u and running...

bit lost again.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

apperantly it looses mmc sometimes but today it did see the sdcards again.
I was able to start an sdcard containing meego (but installed a dev version so only got a xterm).

But starting an sdcard containing nitdroid failed. It starts the kernel, but then says it cannot find any filesystem for root. It shows a list of tried filesystem (types) but the list is emty. Apperantly it needs some sort of initrd image with filesystem drivers. Also tried flasher-3.5 -l -b to boot the nitdroid kernel passing the bootargs like defined in the multiboot nitdroid entry but this also failed with the same message.
Wonder how multiboot does this....

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Hi pali! Yes I did load only the image and it's still stuck. Also tried booting it manually through console with run noloboot but it just shows that it's loading then reboot(like matan's uboot again) no errors whatsoever. Although stskeep's uboot worked fine for me.

By the way I flashed the bin file on device using softupd command. Do you have a diff file there? somehow i can't access gitorous now I don't know why lol! *sigh* only wanted that iemmc command :(

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Based on U-Boot git repository, branch master, commit a1118d60423c1fe25afc9df9015f72739f96fd67

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Thanks! Trial and error mode :D

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

Fianlly managed to boot nitdroid using the u-boot+k48.bin. Nitdroid uImage is on the sdcard without using multiboot. It directly loods the kernel from ths SDcard . But I still use the maemo rootfs as a initial ramdisk and created a special script to setup the system and switch the rootfs to the sdcard.

I went tot hte u-boot console prompt. Gave the command "setenv atagaddr ${init_atagaddr}" follwoed by run emmcboot.

In the end I;d like to have an initfs on the sdcard so I can boor without using the meamo rootfs.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

You can use u-boot hush script instead loading directly uImage kernel. In script you can specify cmd options (like root device)

See bootorder: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...59#post1090859

See how to create boot.scr script: http://elektranox.org/n900/kernel/uboot.html

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

yes, that is what I was planning to do. But to avoid using the internal meamo rootfs i need to define a proper initrd filesystem to be loaded.

One other thing though with your u-boot version. When I go into console mode the screen gets garbled as soon as scrolling is needed. e.g. press enter a couple of times, or run the help command will make the screen unreadable.

Did you notice this an/dor know how to fix this? It would also be nice the be able to scroll back to see the earlier text, or allow output to be piped to some sorte of 'more' command...

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

yes, I have same problem with unreadable console after scrolling. but this must be upstream u-boot bug. I used same rx51 patches on top of one year old u-boot tree and there was not this bug...

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

The main problem is that Nitdroid's kernel (like original Maemo's Kernel) hasn't ext2 driver statically compiled.

So it can't boot, I suppose, from an Ext2 InitRD.
Many months ago I have tried to make a CramFS ramdisk but I have failed to boot from it (probably my error somewhere)

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

I guess it must be possible to build a cpio formatted ramdisk and let the kernel do the proper ramdisk filesystem handling. After all it is able to use the internal maemo flash rootfs as a root filesystem without preloading any filesystem drivers.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

I wonder if it is upstream. It only happens when the console_scrollup() function is called. Something weird is going on when moving the data up the framebuffer.
When I change the console_newline() function to not call the scrollup function but just set console_row = 0 no screen garbling occurs.

Re: u-boot for the RX-51 (N900)
 

But Cpio does not involve the use of EXT2 ?
Cpio Is just a archive format, but when the kernel, during boot process, decompresses the cpio image on ramfs does not try to use EXT2 ?
And without ext2/3/4 available which happens ?

RootFS is UBIFS and UBIFS is statically compiled on kernel
It is not possible to make a ramdisk with ubifs because UbiFs needs a Nand (or NandSim) under the hood

CramFS is available on Maemo and since I not see a module for it, I suppose that is present in the kernel itself.
So a cramfs initrd is teorically bootable.