format of SD card for booting

Hi group,

  I would like to boot from the SD card, the instruction are on the DVD
in "Mini6410 System Installation" section 3. It don't say how to format
the SD card or which files are needed.

  Any pointer??

Kernel and rootfs?

Based on my experience with using the SD card and
http://www.ptxdist.org/oselas/bsp/pengutronix/mini2440_bsp_en.html and
looking in the QuickStart.pdf the:

kernel goes in raw binary format in it's own partition
and the rootfs goes into a ext3 partition.

See http://billforums.station51.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5 for one method (I
see the kernel goes in as ext2).

I have a copy of a HowTo that I used with the BSP on the first link.  I'll
check with the author regarding making his work more public.

Dave

Attached is a Word document, just rename to .doc

Any errors, omissions or additions please advise.

Dave

Got the manual. However, can't attach the file. Let me know your email, I
will send it to you.

You should be aware that Dave's manual is for the Mini2440 and the
bootloader Barebox. It does not work in the same way for the Mini6410 as
long as you try to bootstrap it. It may work later on, if a Barebox
bootloader will be available for the Mini6410 as well and it comes up from
the NAND.
Maybe a reliable Linux based solution to create such a special bootable SD
to bootstrap the Mini6410 should be one of the next tasks for my Mini6410
BSP... Has someone info about the data layout on the SD card, to make the
S3C6410's ROM code aware of it?

Now Dave is aware that the mini6410 is quite different than the mini2440!

Thanks for pointing that out.  I guess the mini210 will be different again
:)

To attach files you have to login first and then some files types, ie .doc
have to have the extension changed in order to attach them.

dave underscore festing at hotmail dot com

Hi Dave,

on the Mini2440 Barebox comes up from NAND and loads the kernel from the SD
card in the way you describe in your document. On the Mini6410 the CPU
comes with an internal so called "IROM" bootloader code (its name is "BL0")
that is responsible to load 8 kiB of data from an attached NAND or SD card.
This 8 kiB piece of code is called "BL1" and is responsible to setup
clocks, SDRAM and loading the remaining bootloader code called "BL2". So,
on an S3C6410 CPU booting works a little bit different than on the S3C2440
CPU.

MrUmunhum: Creating the SD card layout to make the S3C6410 CPU booting from
it seems not very hard: just google for the "6410-partition-sd.sh" script.
Me found it here as a part of a GIT repository:
git://gitorious.org/smartq-initramfs/smartq-initramfs.git

Here it is. Happy reading!

Dave Festing 2011-10-06 11:05:31 Link
Attachment: HowTo boot from SD card.zip (27 KB)

Attached is a Word document, just rename to .doc

Any errors, omissions or additions please advise.

Dave

/* ------------------------------------- */
Dave, thanks but I couldn't unzip in Linux.

Juergen Beisert 2011-10-06 21:04:10 Link


MrUmunhum: Creating the SD card layout to make the S3C6410 CPU booting from
it seems not very hard: just google for the "6410-partition-sd.sh" script.

/* -------------------------------------------- */

Juergen,

  Tried this and created the SD card bit it will not boot.

Dave,

  I got the doc renamed and opened it with soffice. Thanks.

  Didn't work either.

vib 2011-10-07 06:16:28 Link
Attachment: Getting Started with Tiny6410 .pdf (582.7 KB)

Here it is. Happy reading!

/* ----------------------------------------------- */
vib,

  Got nothing, no boot, no beep.

  Also, the Ting6410 image is flipped.

  Thanks anyway.

William

Thanks for all of your posts. I am still unable to get anything to
boot from the SD card. Most of the documents conflict with each other.
And the manufacturer's docs suffer from translation issues. The items
in common are:
2 partitions, one for u-boot or Linux kernel? the other for roof fs.
Boot mode SDcard not NAND.
power cycle.

No matter what I try, no output on the serial console.

But as Juergen stated: my HowTo was for the mini2440.  The mini6410
evidently boots in a totally different way.

From my limited understanding you have a specific bootloader for the way
the hardware setup in the mini6410.

A Google search <mini6410 sd card bootup> brings this up as a first hit:
http://code.google.com/p/mini6410-debian/wiki/Tutorial

Does it provide any guidelines?  Seems a rather complex procedure.

Maybe we should use corrects words to describe what we are doing:

"Booting with an SD card": In this case the Kernel and the rootfs are part
of the SD card. There is some kind of bootloader in target's NAND flash,
that brings up the target and then start to load the kernel from the SD
card and instructs this kernel to use the SD card also as its root
filesystem. This is the case for the Mini2440 with Barebox as the
bootloader in its NAND.

"Booting from an SD card": In this case the bootloader itself is part of
the SD card. The target (or to be more precise: the CPU) only has some
bootstrap loader in its ROM (Samsung calls it "BL0") that is able to load
_some_ data from the SD card (Samsung calls this data "BL1") . As this
"BL1" can only up to 8 kiB in size, we need some strategy to be able to
handle larger bootloaders (Samsung calls it "BL2"). So the "BL1"'s job is
only to initialize the SDRAM and then to load the "BL2".
As BL0, nor BL1 has some clue about filesystems, fixed sectors on the SD
card have to be used. That is the job of the "SD-Flasher.exe" tool: writing
BL1 and BL2 to fixed sectors into the SD card.
BL0 and BL1 are fixed in their function. Beginning with BL2 we are free to
work in the same manner like the Mini2440 (for example) or different like
the superboot or u-boot do.

So, preparing an SD card to boot the Mini6410 from is more special and
needs special layout and data on the SD card.

MrUmunhum,

yes, using the "6410-partition-sd.sh" does not work here as well. Every
bootloader needs a special layout on the SD card, due to the fact they are
using fixed sectors than filesystems.
That's why the "6410-partition-sd.sh" script can only setup the layout for
the bootloader "Qi", and not for the superboot which needs a different
layout setup, and also not for u-boot which needs a third kind of layout.

I suspected that there was much more to this then I realised.  Thanks for
taking the time to explain the process in more detail.

I sure do appreciate the effort that has gone into developing Barebox,
especially the ability to boot WITH an SDcard on the small 64M mini2440 :)

davef 2011-10-08 06:27:22 Link

A Google search <mini6410 sd card bootup> brings this up as a first hit:
http://code.google.com/p/mini6410-debian/wiki/Tutorial

Does it provide any guidelines?  Seems a rather complex procedure.

/* ----------------------------------------- */

Dave,

  This procedure will reflash NAND which is what I don't want to do.
All I want to do is boot from the SD card.

I got my SD card formatted copied with the images, WinCE, Android, Ubuntu
without a problem by following the instructions.  have  youformatted the SD
card as suggested? have you created the directories as suggested? Have you
copied the images and other files as suggested?

I have followed the "installing debian" steps until I got to the "now boot
into windows XP". That's where I stopped, because i dont HAVE windows XP. 

I thought the tutorial was "for Linux users", so I spent quite some time
following the procedure....

You need a windows machine to run the sd-flasher.exe app. you could always
run XP in a vm, or try it with wine.