4 ms·

The boot ROM in the RK3399 in the PinePhone Pro has a hardcoded boot order, and doesn't use the special boot partition of the eMMC - it only looks for a bootloa

The boot ROM in the RK3399 in the PinePhone Pro has a hardcoded boot order, and doesn't use the special boot partition of the eMMC - it only looks for a bootloader on the data partition at a fixed sector (64).

zozbot234 4y ago
Would it be possible to flash Tow-Boot to that sector and only use the rest of the partition as actual data storage? It seems like it would effectively work the same as having a separate SPI hardware chip on-device, while also restoring distribution independence. The downside is that implementing this might require some special-case support though it could likely be implemented most conveniently by using, e.g. dm-linear, so only configuration changes would be needed, not new kernel code.
- MartijnBraam 4y ago
  The issue with that is it's really easily wiped or changed when installing an OS. In the end the SPI hardware did get added and it just works, it's by far the simplest and most reliable solution.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > In the end the SPI hardware did get added and it just works What about their new PineBook Pro, though? Is that situation still in flux? > The issue with that is it's really easily wiped or changed when installing an OS. I'm not really seeing this. If the OS supports this special scheme, they need only deal with the soft block device that's created by mapping "the rest" of the partition. And if they don't, then all bets are off anyway.
    - MartijnBraam 4y ago
      It seems like in the end the pinebook pro did get the SPI chip on it, but then they flashed a closed source U-Boot to the eMMC instead which does not allow booting from SD. So it's again a complete pain for the other distributions to help these users. For the wiping issue, a lot of times I see suggestions to wipe the first few MB of the storage when there's booting and flashing issues to get rid of an old U-Boot, which is exactly what you don't want in the Tow-Boot case.
      - zozbot234 4y ago
        So the SPI chip is effectively useless? Is this something that could be fixed in a newer hardware revision?
        CameronNemo 4y ago
        Not useless, but users will need to manually flash tow-boot when that should just be the default. If Pine64 had made better moves, their customers would have never had to worry about firmware or bootloaders, only which (standard) distro install media to use.
      - dTal 4y ago
        >a closed source U-Boot U-Boot is GPL. How is this possible?

zozbot234 4y ago

Would it be possible to flash Tow-Boot to that sector and only use the rest of the partition as actual data storage? It seems like it would effectively work the same as having a separate SPI hardware chip on-device, while also restoring distribution independence. The downside is that implementing this might require some special-case support though it could likely be implemented most conveniently by using, e.g. dm-linear, so only configuration changes would be needed, not new kernel code.

MartijnBraam 4y ago
The issue with that is it's really easily wiped or changed when installing an OS. In the end the SPI hardware did get added and it just works, it's by far the simplest and most reliable solution.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > In the end the SPI hardware did get added and it just works What about their new PineBook Pro, though? Is that situation still in flux? > The issue with that is it's really easily wiped or changed when installing an OS. I'm not really seeing this. If the OS supports this special scheme, they need only deal with the soft block device that's created by mapping "the rest" of the partition. And if they don't, then all bets are off anyway.
  - MartijnBraam 4y ago
    It seems like in the end the pinebook pro did get the SPI chip on it, but then they flashed a closed source U-Boot to the eMMC instead which does not allow booting from SD. So it's again a complete pain for the other distributions to help these users. For the wiping issue, a lot of times I see suggestions to wipe the first few MB of the storage when there's booting and flashing issues to get rid of an old U-Boot, which is exactly what you don't want in the Tow-Boot case.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      So the SPI chip is effectively useless? Is this something that could be fixed in a newer hardware revision?
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
        Not useless, but users will need to manually flash tow-boot when that should just be the default. If Pine64 had made better moves, their customers would have never had to worry about firmware or bootloaders, only which (standard) distro install media to use.
    - dTal 4y ago
      >a closed source U-Boot U-Boot is GPL. How is this possible?