Re: Uboot with no mmu booting standalone application

Altera_Forum · ‎10-14-2010

Hello,

I'm trying to get u-boot starts my standalone "Hello World" application. So this is what I did:

1) Create Application in Nios IDE

2) Create a binary from elf

nios2-linux-gnu-objcopy -O binary testNiosUboot.elf testNiosUboot.bin

I did not remove any section from the elf...

3) check the elf disassembly code to see if it match with the binary i just generated:

 
testNiosUboot.elf:     file format elf32-littlenios2
 
Disassembly of section .exceptions:
 
00000020 <alt_exception>:
  20: deffed04  addi sp,sp,-76
  24: dfc00015  stw ra,0(sp)
  28: d8400215  stw at,8(sp)
...
 
000000ec <alt_irq_handler>:
  ec: defff904  addi sp,sp,-28
  f0: dfc00615  stw ra,24(sp)
  f4: df000515  stw fp,20(sp)
  f8: df000504  addi fp,sp,20
 ...
Disassembly of section .text:
 
000001c4 <_start>:
     1c4: 00880014  movui r2,8192
     1c8: 10000033  initd 0(r2)
     1cc: 10bff804  addi r2,r2,-32
     1d0: 00bffd16  blt zero,r2,1c8 <_start+0x4>
 ...

Binary output:

 
Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
00000000   04 ED FF DE 15 00 C0 DF  15 02 40 D8 15 03 80 D8   
00000010   15 04 C0 D8 15 05 00 D9  15 06 40 D9 15 07 80 D9   
00000020   15 08 C0 D9 7A 30 0B 00  15 09 00 DA 15 0A 40 DA   
...
00000180   15 FB BF E0 17 FB BF E0  3A 00 05 10 1E 01 00 10
00000190   06 D8 3F 00 17 06 C0 DF  17 05 00 DF 04 07 C0 DE
000001A0   3A 28 00 F8 14 00 88 00  33 00 00 10 04 F8 BF 10
000001B0   16 FD BF 00 34 80 C0 06  14 00 C0 DE 74 00 80 06
...

4) Create u-boot image

 
mkimage -A nios2 -O linux -T standalone -C none -a 0x00000020 -e 0x000001C4 -n "testNiosUboot" -d testNiosUboot.bin uImageTest

I set the loadin address to 0x20 because my binary first byte is the exception entry first byte. And starting address to 0x1C4.

5) Try it...

UBOOT>tftpboot 1000000 uImageTest
Using ALTERA_TSE-0 device
TFTP from server 192.168.1.113; our IP address is 192.168.1.85
Filename 'uImageTest'.
Load address: 0x1000000
Loading:# ############
done
Bytes transferred = 62780 (f53c hex)
UBOOT>bootm 1000000# # Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 01000000 ...
   Image Name:   testNiosUboot
   Image Type:   NIOS II Linux Standalone Program (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    62716 Bytes = 61.2 KiB
   Load Address: 00000020
   Entry Point:  000001c4
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
   Loading Standalone Program ... OK
OK

It hangs....

6) Look at u-boot code and make dirty patches:

In cmd_bootm.c, I uncomment enable_interrupts because it stops execution and we never go to bootm_start_standalone :

 
 if (images.os.type == IH_TYPE_STANDALONE) {
  printf("iflag = %x\n", iflag);
  /*if (iflag)
  enable_interrupts();*/
  /* This may return when 'autostart' is 'no' */
  bootm_start_standalone(iflag, argc, argv);
  return 0;
 }

Then I cutout lot of stuff here to test it quickly:

 
static int bootm_start_standalone(ulong iflag, int argc, char *argv)
{
 char  *s;
 int   (*appl)(int, char *);
 /* Don't start if "autostart" is set to "no" */
 /*
 if (((s = getenv("autostart")) != NULL) && (strcmp(s, "no") == 0)) {
  char buf;
  sprintf(buf, "%lX", images.os.image_len);
  setenv("filesize", buf);
  return 0;
 }*/
 
 appl = (int (*)(int, char *))/*ntohl*/(images.ep);
 printf("Jump to 0x%08lx\n", appl);
 (*appl)(argc-1, &argv);
 return 0;
}

I got "Jump to 0x000001c4" printed out but nothing happens....I don't have my Hello World....

Am I wrong somewhere ??

Thanks,

Franck.

Altera_Forum · ‎10-14-2010

I think I messed something up last time. It works. However I had to keep my patches I order to make it works....

Altera_Forum · ‎09-13-2011

Hi,

Was your hello world application a u-boot standalone application (i mean compiled with u-boot source) or a generic linux application.

I have a doubt that a linux application would be having printf(...) calling some syscalls to write string on UART, and syscall implementations would not be available in standalone environment.

Secondly, is there a better way to configure/find the load address of a compiled application?

Regards

Manik

Altera_Forum · ‎09-13-2011

It was a loooong time ago :)

It was a Nios2 executable (not a linux image or uboot stuff).

The common way of starting an elf file is bootelf. However, for testing purpose I wanted to put this program in a uboot image....

If you want to find the linked address of an elf program you can use objdump.

Best regards,

Franck.

Altera_Forum · ‎09-13-2011

Thanks for the information.