[fedora-arm] U-Boot?

[Niels de Vos]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 09:22:51PM +0200, Henrik Nordström wrote:
> Been a rather intense discussion regarding U-Boot on IRC today, and time
> for some reflections and a little decision to be taken.
> 
> In stage3 we do have an u-boot package which provides uboot images for
> pandaboard, trimslice, beagleboard and some more. The pandaboard
> requires u-boot on the boot media, while on trimslice the vendor
> provided u-boot is in reality quite sufficient and stored separately in
> a nor flash chip.
> 
> Several (myself included) thinks it would be good if Fedora fully
> supported some boards, with both kernel & up to date bootloader
> (u-boot). But u-boot is not a fedora package today and will require both
> willing maintainers and package review to happen.
> 
> So time for some questions.
> 
> Should Fedora for ARM officially support for some well known boards?

I think that makes sense, it will create a lower entry level for people
who want to run Fedora on their ARM device.

> Do you think Fedora should provide the bootloader for well known boards
> where the required board support is merged mainline?

This would be the ultimate goal. But a very clear definition of which
boards (and possibly variants) is a must. If a board differs in only one
component, the boadloader image may not work (as expected).

> Do you know anyone who would be willing to help maintain u-boot within
> Fedora?

I'm interested and would be able to help, at least for some boards.

> Should u-boot images then also be provided for boards without a trivial
> recovery mechanism in case an u-boot update fails? Where there is a risk
> of creating bricks if the user do not have jtag access to their board.

Some way of recovery should be thought about.

Maybe chain-load 'our' u-boot image (if possible) and only install it on
the flash if it passes some tests. - But that's thinking out loud...

> Note: Supporting u-boot on boards without mainline u-boot support is not
> an option.

Of course not :) Only support what it merged, if we write patches, make
sure that upstream accepts them before including them in the package.


What about systems that use OpenFirmware or any of the other
bootloaders? u-boot is likely the one used most, but we need to keep an
eye on other solutions as well, not?

Cheers,
Niels

> 
> 
> Regards
> Henrik
> 
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