Android 2.2/2.3 boot.img

Chris Westervelt

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: AM3517

Has anyone successfully built the composite boot.img with a zImage and ramdisk.img and booted it. I really would prefer this paradigm to the out of band method used for booting Android in the Android Rowboat distribution. It makes updating boards in the field a reall pain in the ass whereas using fastboot is more the mainstream method for using Android. Also, segregating the read only and read write NAND partitions insures abrupt power loss doesn't cause corrupted system files preventing a boot up. The script that comes with Android for doing this is mkbootimg.sh and produces an image. However when used with fastboot boot boot.img.new, it does not quite behave as expected. Kernel command line parameters for ttyS2 do not seem to work as they did with uImage in that there is no kernel output. Anyone got an idea?

over 13 years ago

0 Vishveshwar Bhat over 13 years ago

TI__Genius 10210 points

The rowboat android currently does not support fastboot using *.img due to the partitioning scheme currently in use.

Currently there are no plans to change the partitioning scheme to be in sync with the AOSP partitioning scheme.

0 Chris Westervelt over 13 years ago in reply to Vishveshwar Bhat

Intellectual 440 points

Is this due to a TI resource issue or a technical issue with the AM3517/OMAP processors? Do you know if third party partners like Mentor have accomplished this with the AM3517?

0 Vishveshwar Bhat over 13 years ago in reply to Chris Westervelt

TI__Genius 10210 points

As per http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/TI-Android-GingerBread-2.3.4-DevKit-2.1_UserGuide#Fastboot_and_UBI_rootfs writing to NAND using fastboot is possible, so I expect that AOSP-style partitions can be done with some modifications in kernel and init scripts.

As mentioned previously, we have not planned this activity so far.

0 Chris Westervelt over 13 years ago in reply to Vishveshwar Bhat

Intellectual 440 points

I gave up on this and pursued getting the multi partition NAND Android scheme (system, userdata, cache) to work. When the system came up and mounted the system partition, attempts to load and execute critical files failed resulting in a permissions error. After much investigation into what might be the cause, the fs/yaffs driver files were found to be too old and caused these failures. A fresh git of the source and patch to the Froyo kernel did the trick and the system came up nice and clean! Also, the system runs much faster when everything isn't clumped into one NAND partition. I un-commented the ro root and system directory mounts as well. I had to use an initramfs scheme to achieve this. This is in alignment with the original Android file system design scheme.

0 Vishveshwar Bhat over 13 years ago in reply to Chris Westervelt

TI__Genius 10210 points

Thanks for the update.

Could you please post your notes on achieving this at our community forum http://groups.google.com/group/rowboat ?

This information would be useful to others too.

0 Chris Westervelt over 13 years ago in reply to Vishveshwar Bhat

Intellectual 440 points

As soon as I get caught up I will

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Android 2.2/2.3 boot.img