Write an uImage from a SD card to the eMMC memory

which os image are you using for your uImage ?

I'm using Android 4.3 for the Riotboard.

And I want to upgrade the uImage while running the device.

http://boundarydevices.com/u-boot-on-i-mx6/

In that link is explained what I want to, but I want to load the uImage into the eMMC and not into the SD card,

because I'm running Android from the eMMC.

can you try this android tools : http://downloads.element14.com/downloads/riotboard/Android/Tools.zip

its the official Android 4.3 release .

you can find more images here :RIoTboard BSP Images and Tools Download - Android and Linux

let us know if you have challenges in flashing .

I use that tools to flash complete images to the emmc.

But I would like to flash just the uImage to the eMMC, while the u-boot is running.

Have you tried booting from SD and copying the uImage over to the eMMC?  That is what I do.  I use an SD that I dd the yocto linux sdcard image onto (fsl-image-fb-riotboard.sdcard) provided on this site.  It will mount all the mmcblk0 partitions in /media. 

Hi Carlos

I read with attention your answer as somebody asked me recently if it was possible to copy a Linux BSP image *.img into the eMMC rather than an SD-Card.

If I understand well, I should be able to do that just connecting my RiOTboard with a mini-usb cable to my computer and select the drive corresponding to the eMMC storage using the dd command or the Win32DiskImager tool, right ?

Thanks in advance

Greg

Hi Greg,

Sorry, I don't know if that will work.  I do not use the mini-usb connection.  I created an SD I could boot from using the yocto linux sdcard image provided by the riot folks.  I boot from it in order to write to the eMMC.  I did look at the instructions in the xml from the mfrtool in order to know how to partition the eMMC for linux and setup the eMMC.  These are to commands I do to partition the eMMC after booting from the SD card:

IMPORTANT: this is for kernel/u-boot 3.10 that uses the dtb files.  For 3.0 it is different.

#First unmount the eMMC flash partitions:

umount /media/mmcblk0p*

#Destroy partition table:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 count=1

#Create 2 partitions:

echo -e "o\nn\np\n1\n129\n384\nt\nc\nn\np\n2\n385\n\np\nw" | fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

#OS will remount so unmount again

sync; sleep 5

umount /media/mmcblk0p*

IMPORTANT: the fdisk commands above assume you are using cylinder units which is the default for the fdisk on the linux sdcard image mentioned above.

Then to copy the u-boot:

#Write uboot and clean up u-boot parameters:

dd if=u-boot.imx of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 seek=2 conv=fsync

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 seek=1024 count=16

Then the kernel:

#Format and mount boot partition:

mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/mmcblk0p1

mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/mmcblk0p1

#Copy kernel and dtb to boot partition:

cp uImage imx6solo_RIoTboard.dtb /media/mmcblk0p1/.

Then the root filesystem.  Please note I am using the rootfs file (no kernel ones) I got from armhf.com (I did uncompress the tar.xz on my machine before putting it on the SD card because the linux on the sdcard does not have xz-utils):

#Format and mount root file system (rootfs) partition:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2

mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /media/mmcblk0p2

#Copy rootfs to it:

tar xvf ubuntu-trusty-14.04-armhf.com-20140603.tar -C /media/mmcblk0p2

#Sync pending disk writes for good measure:

sync

After that, whenever I have a new kernel to try, I just boot from the SD card, mount mmcblk0p1 and overwrite the uImage and dtb files.

Once you have a board setup the way you like it you can use dd to copy the entire eMMC to a file which you can dd back to other boards.  I have done that too and works well.

this is for kernel/u-boot 3.10 that uses the dtb files.  For 3.0 it is different.

the uboot 2009.08 used with 3.0 kernel or Ubuntu distro expects kernel at a particular location rather than a partition.

the uboot 2014 used with  3.10.17 uses dts & expects uImage in /boot directory.

so there goes the difference.

Once you have a board setup the way you like it you can use dd to copy the entire eMMC to a file which you can dd back to other boards.

a query based on above was asked before here

I have done that too and works well.

It would be nice if you copy the headers and  modules also.