Radxa rock-pi-3a

Radxa rock-pi-3a

[Richard Kojedzinszky]

Dear community,

I own a rock-pi-3a board with 8G ram. Right now, radxa's u-boot is 
capable of detecting the whole amount during boot. Upstream u-boot shows 
1G of dram installed.

I've started with evb-rk3568_defconfig.

What I would like to achieve is that u-boot load grub-efi, to finally 
boot the operating system. Howewer, with radxa uboot, and using 
grub-efi, the kernel sees 4G only. If I boot the kernel image directly 
from radxa u-boot, the whole 8G is visible. I assume that efi is broken 
somehow, as I get multiple warnings from kernel regarding EFI firmware.


Reading radxa's u-boot, it seems that it uses ATAGs do detect memory 
size. Am I in the right way?

Would it be beneficial to port some of that code to upstream u-boot, or 
are there other solutions to detect correct memory size?


Thanks in advance,
Richard

Re: Radxa rock-pi-3a

[Kever Yang]

Hi Richard,

     The ATAGs to pass the parameters is not available on the mainline 
U-Boot, and only use os_regs for the ram size for now, it do have the 
limitation for max 4GB now.

     There is a fix for this  on the list, you can try it:

https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/20220222013131.3114990-12-pgwipeout@gmail.com/



Thanks,

- Kever

On 2022/4/8 15:44, Richard Kojedzinszky wrote:
> Dear community,
>
> I own a rock-pi-3a board with 8G ram. Right now, radxa's u-boot is 
> capable of detecting the whole amount during boot. Upstream u-boot 
> shows 1G of dram installed.
>
> I've started with evb-rk3568_defconfig.
>
> What I would like to achieve is that u-boot load grub-efi, to finally 
> boot the operating system. Howewer, with radxa uboot, and using 
> grub-efi, the kernel sees 4G only. If I boot the kernel image directly 
> from radxa u-boot, the whole 8G is visible. I assume that efi is 
> broken somehow, as I get multiple warnings from kernel regarding EFI 
> firmware.
>
>
> Reading radxa's u-boot, it seems that it uses ATAGs do detect memory 
> size. Am I in the right way?
>
> Would it be beneficial to port some of that code to upstream u-boot, 
> or are there other solutions to detect correct memory size?
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Richard

Re: Radxa rock-pi-3a

[Richard Kojedzinszky]

Hi Kever,

Thanks for your reply! I greatly appreciate your work, really. 
Additionally, can you please provide me sources of documentations, on 
which you base your work? I am totally blind in this area, and I would 
be interested in reading such kind of documentation of the SoCs.

Many thanks,
Richard

2022-04-09 04:28 időpontban Kever Yang ezt írta:
> Hi Richard,
> 
>     The ATAGs to pass the parameters is not available on the mainline
> U-Boot, and only use os_regs for the ram size for now, it do have the
> limitation for max 4GB now.
> 
>     There is a fix for this  on the list, you can try it:
> 
> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/20220222013131.3114990-12-pgwipeout@gmail.com/
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - Kever
> 
> On 2022/4/8 15:44, Richard Kojedzinszky wrote:
>> Dear community,
>> 
>> I own a rock-pi-3a board with 8G ram. Right now, radxa's u-boot is 
>> capable of detecting the whole amount during boot. Upstream u-boot 
>> shows 1G of dram installed.
>> 
>> I've started with evb-rk3568_defconfig.
>> 
>> What I would like to achieve is that u-boot load grub-efi, to finally 
>> boot the operating system. Howewer, with radxa uboot, and using 
>> grub-efi, the kernel sees 4G only. If I boot the kernel image directly 
>> from radxa u-boot, the whole 8G is visible. I assume that efi is 
>> broken somehow, as I get multiple warnings from kernel regarding EFI 
>> firmware.
>> 
>> 
>> Reading radxa's u-boot, it seems that it uses ATAGs do detect memory 
>> size. Am I in the right way?
>> 
>> Would it be beneficial to port some of that code to upstream u-boot, 
>> or are there other solutions to detect correct memory size?
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Richard

Re: Radxa rock-pi-3a

[Richard Kojedzinszky]

Dear Kever,

I've tried the patch, and now U-Boot sees the whole 8G. It can boot 
linux directly, that works now. Great!

Howewer, booting linux through grub-efi 
(/boot/efi/EFI/debian/grubaa64.efi) does not work. Grub itself starts, 
shows the menu, but booting linux stops. Booting from console looks 
like:

grub> linux (hd0,gpt2)/boot/vmlinuz-5.15.32
grub> linux (hd0,gpt2)/boot/vmlinuz-5.15.32 root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 
console=ttyS2,1500000 rootwait
grub> initrd (hd0,gpt2)/boot/initrd.img-5.15.32
grub> boot
EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel...
EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table
EFI stub: Exiting boot services...

These are the last lines. I see no sign of the kernel booting. For 
example, ethernet leds are not turned on.

This u-boot+efi setup works on other boards, and also it worked before 
the patch, with 1G visible ram only.


Thanks in advance,
Richard

2022-04-09 06:56 időpontban Richard Kojedzinszky ezt írta:
> Hi Kever,
> 
> Thanks for your reply! I greatly appreciate your work, really.
> Additionally, can you please provide me sources of documentations, on
> which you base your work? I am totally blind in this area, and I would
> be interested in reading such kind of documentation of the SoCs.
> 
> Many thanks,
> Richard
> 
> 2022-04-09 04:28 időpontban Kever Yang ezt írta:
>> Hi Richard,
>> 
>>     The ATAGs to pass the parameters is not available on the mainline
>> U-Boot, and only use os_regs for the ram size for now, it do have the
>> limitation for max 4GB now.
>> 
>>     There is a fix for this  on the list, you can try it:
>> 
>> https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/patch/20220222013131.3114990-12-pgwipeout@gmail.com/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> - Kever
>> 
>> On 2022/4/8 15:44, Richard Kojedzinszky wrote:
>>> Dear community,
>>> 
>>> I own a rock-pi-3a board with 8G ram. Right now, radxa's u-boot is 
>>> capable of detecting the whole amount during boot. Upstream u-boot 
>>> shows 1G of dram installed.
>>> 
>>> I've started with evb-rk3568_defconfig.
>>> 
>>> What I would like to achieve is that u-boot load grub-efi, to finally 
>>> boot the operating system. Howewer, with radxa uboot, and using 
>>> grub-efi, the kernel sees 4G only. If I boot the kernel image 
>>> directly from radxa u-boot, the whole 8G is visible. I assume that 
>>> efi is broken somehow, as I get multiple warnings from kernel 
>>> regarding EFI firmware.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Reading radxa's u-boot, it seems that it uses ATAGs do detect memory 
>>> size. Am I in the right way?
>>> 
>>> Would it be beneficial to port some of that code to upstream u-boot, 
>>> or are there other solutions to detect correct memory size?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Richard