U-Boot with direct NVMe boot support for eMMC/SPI Flash

[Wizzard]

I installed my new NVMe, copied whole eMMC to NVMe using dd but it does not boot from NVMe. Why? Should I clean install that Linux or to change something?

[tophneal]

Building is not for me, but I would like to know if I am the only one with this issue and if someone alse also tried this new SPI flash.

If it is only warning, it is not a big problem for me.

I saw this same message in Chromium on my EMMC, when I flashed the initial u-boot from this thread. (Not flashed to SPI, since I'm not in a position it'd be useful, yet.) I think I was in a shell, trying to get hardware information, and the message filled my screen.

[Wizzard]

Seems that the priority using this SPi flash is SD, eMMC, NVMe. I had to wipe my eMMC to boot from NVMe. Maybe I did something wrong, but finally, it boots just from NVMe, using just 2 partitions, EFI and ROOT.

[tophneal]

Seems that the priority using this SPi flash is SD, eMMC, NVMe. I had to wipe my eMMC to boot from NVMe. Maybe I did something wrong, but finally, it boots just from NVMe, using just 2 partitions, EFI and ROOT.

I feel like this makes the most sense. I know I'd much rather switch off my emmc than remove my SSD to load a different OS.

[Solra Bizna]

I've been trying to make a custom build of this that configures the serial port for 230400 baud, since that's the highest rate my only reliable serial adapter can operate at. I did "make pinebookpro-rk3399_defconfig", used "make menuconfig" to set CONFIG_BAUD to 230400, built, dd'd the newly-built u-boot.img into place. It didn't seem to change the baud rate. I've got it working post-kernel with appropriate kernel command lines, but that's too late to debug what I need to debug.

What am I doing wrong?

[tophneal]

I've added information about this custom u-boot to the wiki boot drives section. If anyone here is able to do so, could you please verify the current boot order and update the wiki if it is wrong?

[nyxxenator]

I might be mixing up my terminology because I'm not super experienced with the SBC stuff, but is it possible to do something like GRUB in U-Boot but where you can select a boot device? Kinda like on x86 systems where you can usually press a keyboard button while it's booting and then you get the choice of harddrive, cd drive, network or usb? Just an example. I have an old netbook where I would do that if I wanted to boot an SD card instead of the internal SSD.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I might be mixing up my terminology because I'm not super experienced with the SBC stuff, but is it possible to do something like GRUB in U-Boot but where you can select a boot device? Kinda like on x86 systems where you can usually press a keyboard button while it's booting and then you get the choice of harddrive, cd drive, network or usb? Just an example. I have an old netbook where I would do that if I wanted to boot an SD card instead of the internal SSD.

U-Boot can be interrupted, but alternatives need to then be specified by a command line. Unfortunately, because U-Boot doesn't support most console equipment, this is done by an attached serial console, and not practical for daily use or with mobile devices. This is the main reason for boot-device hierarchy preferences in the compiled U-Boot binary, etc.

[Wizzard]

I am not sure if it is related, but I am seeing the errors like this when booting and in dmesg since yesterday:

Code:

rockchip-dmc dmc: Get wrong frequency, Request 800000000, Current 856000000

rockchip-dmc is Dynamic Memory Controller driver that dynamically adjusts DRAM frequency:
http://archive.lwn.net:8080/devicetree/2...ora.com/t/
There are probably some incompatibilities between the current Trusted Firmware and kernel your distro is using: it's pretty clear that rockchip-dmc can't set the frequency it wants.
I guess you can try building your own SPI image  with different ATF binary (e.g. the one used in stock U-Boot) and see if that fixes these errors.

Please, would it be possible to help solving this issue for me? I guess there are more people using this uboot fix.
It is a little annoying that I cannot use the text console because of this properly, cause after typing a character this warning appears.

[mamboman777]

I do not understand how to get this working. I used gnome-disk-utility to"restore" a fresh disk image to s micro SD card. I booted to the SD card then "restored" Manjaro to the emmc and default Debian to the nvme. According to the wiki the uboot code that I need is in the Manjaro release, but it's still booting from SD card first, emmc second. Nothing from nvme. What am I doing wrong?