Cyclone 5 first boot linux crashes, howto debug?

[qwitza]

Hello,

We have a design with a Cyclone V FPGA. Some boards only boot after a reset following power-on.

Problem:

The Debian Linux with U-Boot boots from the SD card, but after approximately 10 seconds, the system crashes and becomes unresponsive. The login prompt appears (on UART debug), but I cannot enter anything, and the network interface does not work.

How should I start troubleshooting?

There is a JTAG on the board, but I have never used it until now.

Any hints or links would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry, but I have no idea how to resolve this, or where to start with the troubleshooting.

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Let me check on this.

Kind of weird that the feature allows full configuration in linux if it does not allow full configuration.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Unfortunately, there is not much documentation on this.

I could not find out why a full configuration option is enable where it is not able to be run.

But in general when configuring the FPGA from linux, we should not do a full configuration as the full configuration will cause the hps to be configured and the linux will crash.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[qwitza]

Hi,

thank you very much for your support.

We are only writing the full RPD file (firmware) without making any changes to the HPS.

As far as we understand, this file only contains the FPGA firmware and should not affect the HPS, correct?

What should we do next, and where can we get further support?

Thanks again!

Best regards

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Thanks for the new information.

I am able to reproduce the issue here in a dev kit here.

Please allow me sometime to take a look into this issue.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Could you give me some time as we are still discussing on this issue internally.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[qwitza]

Hi,

thanks for the message.

We'll wait then.

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Please give us some more time as they are still testing this at the moment.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

I got a feedback from the team.

The overlay method is not supported for the the CycloneV device.

You should use the "dd" method.

e.g.

dd if=sdcard/soc_system.rbf of=/dev/fpga0 bs=1M

You could find more details in the link below:

https://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/GSRD131ProgrammingFPGA

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Did you managed to try out the "dd" command to flash the FPGA configuration?

We should not use the overlay method as it is not catered for the CycloneV device.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Any update on this case?

Do you have any follow up question for this case?

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

As we do not receive any response from you on the previous question/reply/answer that we have provided. Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com/s/?language=en_US’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you on your follow-up questions.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[qwitza]

Hello,
sorry, I was busy.
I will give them a try this week or next.

[KennyTan_Altera]

Case reopening, please let us know the status once you have try the above suggestion.

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Did you managed to try out the recommended tool for programming from linux?

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Do you have any update on this?

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

As we do not receive any response from you on the previous question/reply/answer that we have provided. Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com/s/?language=en_US’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you on your follow-up questions.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[qwitza]

Hello,

after extensive testing and verification, I am confident that our crash (Linux stall) is not caused by writing the firmware, since, in our current configuration, only U-Boot writes the firmware. However, our application sometimes fails to work on the first boot; after a simple reset, everything functions as expected.

At this point, I suspect a problem related to the HPS2FPGA bridge. The crash almost always occurs in code accessing this bridge, making it very difficult to debug. 

Could you please assist with further troubleshooting?

This issue is critical for our project.

Thank you very much.

[qwitza]

Hello,

I've done some additional testing and wanted to share the current state:

• The firmware is only written during U-Boot.

• Occasionally, after powering on, I cannot access the bridge.

• I'm using the devmem2 program with the following command:
  ./devmem2 0xff200000 w

• Sometimes it works, but other times Linux crashes.

• The last output I get is:

./devmem2 0xff200000 w
/dev/mem opened. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.