Bypassing Uboot

John Demery

All:

If I wanted to use a bootloader and boot linux kernel directly by bypassing uboot (in an effort to reduce boot time and have an upgrade process outside of linux), would this be possible?

I've seen blogs about OMAP doing something similar by utilizing a configuration header. Does anyone know if I can do something similar for Sitara?

Thanks,

John Demery

over 11 years ago

0 Josh Elliott over 11 years ago

TI__Expert 3010 points

Hey John,

There would certainly be alternative methods to boot linux besides u-boot; however, SDK does not support or provide any other means of doing so besides u-boot.

The majority of the boot time is due to the kernel rather than u-boot. If you haven't looked into it, you may want to check out some guides on reducing boot time, such as the one found here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Sitara_Linux_Training. One simple thing you can do to greatly reduce the boot time of u-boot is to take out the 3 second delay that is put there to make it easier to access the u-boot prompt.

What other upgrade process were you looking at? Can you use u-boot to do firmware upgrades? Data can be sent to u-boot via USB, SD card, TFTP, and numerous other methods.

Regards,

Josh

0 John Murphy1 over 11 years ago in reply to Josh Elliott

Expert 1210 points

Have you checked out u-boot "falcon mode"?

http://u-boot.10912.n7.nabble.com/PATCH-v2-0-5-Improve-falcon-mode-and-am335x-evm-docs-td158839.html

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Bypassing Uboot