[Bug 1223261] [NEW] dtb concatenation support

[Paolo Pisati]

Public bug reported:

Since release 3.11 (actually 3.10 in some cases), kernel mandates a DTB
tree to be available at boot time or it fails to boot on some boards
(pandaboard in this case): to support this scenario, support for DTB
concatenation was added to the Saucy/generic multiplatform kernel and
the last missing bits was to teach flash-kernel how and when to attach a
dtb tree to the kernel before flashing it - the attached patch achieves
it adding two fields to the board database.

The two new fields are:

DTB-Kernel-Version: this is minimum kernel version after which we decide
to concatenate a DTB - if the kernel version is below the version
mentioned here, dtb won't be attached thus we can safely install the new
flash-kernel version on a older kernel/installation - 3.5 omap4 desktop
won't get dtb concatenation, while people using omap4 for server and
thus updating to the latest kernel (3.11 in this case) will

DTB-Id: this is the dtb file that will be concatenated - while for panda
there are at least 3 different DTBs, i tested the pandaes dtb variant
with a wide range of hw revisions and it worked (tested on panda es,
panda rev 4 and panda rev b1) - i'll follow up with another patch that
does a run-time guessing of the correct hardware in case trouble arises

Last but not least, i had to add a new Panda entry to the board database
because when you boot it with a dtb-enabled kernel, the 'Hardware'
string in /proc/cpuinfo changes from 'OMAP4 Panda board' to 'Generic
OMAP4 (Flattened Device Tree)'.

The attached patch is derived on the dtb-concatenation work available in
the Debian repository (http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=d-i/flash-
kernel.git;a=commit;h=e7fc8e9ef6de21428acba96b8cec97744a46da6b).

Feel free to improve the shell code.

** Affects: flash-kernel (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Patch added: "flash-kernel-dtbconcat.patch"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1223261/+attachment/3812908/+files/flash-kernel-dtbconcat.patch

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1223261

Title:
  dtb concatenation support

Status in “flash-kernel” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Since release 3.11 (actually 3.10 in some cases), kernel mandates a
  DTB tree to be available at boot time or it fails to boot on some
  boards (pandaboard in this case): to support this scenario, support
  for DTB concatenation was added to the Saucy/generic multiplatform
  kernel and the last missing bits was to teach flash-kernel how and
  when to attach a dtb tree to the kernel before flashing it - the
  attached patch achieves it adding two fields to the board database.

  The two new fields are:

  DTB-Kernel-Version: this is minimum kernel version after which we
  decide to concatenate a DTB - if the kernel version is below the
  version mentioned here, dtb won't be attached thus we can safely
  install the new flash-kernel version on a older kernel/installation -
  3.5 omap4 desktop won't get dtb concatenation, while people using
  omap4 for server and thus updating to the latest kernel (3.11 in this
  case) will

  DTB-Id: this is the dtb file that will be concatenated - while for
  panda there are at least 3 different DTBs, i tested the pandaes dtb
  variant with a wide range of hw revisions and it worked (tested on
  panda es, panda rev 4 and panda rev b1) - i'll follow up with another
  patch that does a run-time guessing of the correct hardware in case
  trouble arises

  Last but not least, i had to add a new Panda entry to the board
  database because when you boot it with a dtb-enabled kernel, the
  'Hardware' string in /proc/cpuinfo changes from 'OMAP4 Panda board' to
  'Generic OMAP4 (Flattened Device Tree)'.

  The attached patch is derived on the dtb-concatenation work available
  in the Debian repository (http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=d-i
  /flash-
  kernel.git;a=commit;h=e7fc8e9ef6de21428acba96b8cec97744a46da6b).

  Feel free to improve the shell code.

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