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Avnet Boards General Bootgen vs mkimage with U-Boot SPL
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Bootgen vs mkimage with U-Boot SPL

Former Member
Former Member over 9 years ago
I have created a U-Boot bootloader and Linux operating system using Buildroot
 
    git clone git://git.buildroot.net/buildroot
    cd buildroot
    make zynq_zed_defconfig
    make
 
This was successful, and I am able to boot Linux on my ZedBoard using a microSD as the boot device and using the BOOT.BIN that buildroot/U-Boot created from the U-Boot SPL binary.
 
The latest buildroot version uses U-Boot's mkimage to create a Zynq-compatible first stage bootloader from the U-Boot SPL binary (u-boot-spl.bin). I think this used to require a special python tool, but now mkimage has been given the ability to generate this binary itself.
 
However, I would like to experiment with the Xilinx bootgen tool instead of mkimage. Unfortunately, when I use bootgen, the resulting BOOT.BIN does not work.
 
I am using a BIF file (boot.bif) as follows:
 
    image:
    {
        [bootloader] u-boot-spl.bin
    }
 
I am invoking bootgen like this:
 
    bootgen -arch zynq -image boot.bif -o BOOT.BIN
 
The resulting BOOT.BIN file is 90600 bytes, which is larger than what I create using mkimage (86952 bytes):
 
    $ mkimage -A arm -T zynqimage -d u-boot-spl.bin BOOT.BIN
    Image Type   : Xilinx Zynq Boot Image support
    Image Offset : 0x000008c0
    Image Size   : 86952 bytes (86952 bytes packed)
    Image Load   : 0x00000000
    User Field   : 0x00000000
    Checksum     : 0xfd17ac31
 
Can anyone tell me how to get bootgen to generate a bootable binary from my u-boot-spl.bin? I noticed that if I specify zynqmp instead of zynq for -arch, the file size is exactly 256 bytes larger, but it still does not work.
 
Thanks,
 
Gregg
 
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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago

    It seems that bootgen leaves the length fields in the boot header set to zero when the input file is a raw binary. It must rely on the elf headers for length information. I was able to make this work by converting the bin file to an elf using objcopy (search for bin2elf), which it turns out is exactly what you suggested above. Thanks.

    Gregg

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  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 9 years ago

    It seems that bootgen leaves the length fields in the boot header set to zero when the input file is a raw binary. It must rely on the elf headers for length information. I was able to make this work by converting the bin file to an elf using objcopy (search for bin2elf), which it turns out is exactly what you suggested above. Thanks.

    Gregg

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