Update bitstream and kernel in flash from Linux : A clean way to generate binary file

[Altera_Forum]

Hi all, 

 I wish to update my entire system from a running Linux by changing Flash content : changing bitstream and kernel. My flash is partitioned with 2 area : bitstream (4MB ) and kernel (4MB ).  My main issue is that using altera tools to convert sof2flash and elf2flash I do not have intermediary files : raw binary files that I can write to my flash using  cp <file> /dev/mtdXI only get srec files that are not usable from Linux to Flash my external memory (as far as I know, but maybe there is a tool to write srec files from nios2-linux)  Ok I have already binary file : the .sof and my zImage but :  

• sof2flash adds (or remove) some headers and configure bitstream loading mode : in my case active parallel 
• elf2flash adds a bootloader before my zImage 

  So I need to pass through sof2flash and elf2flash. Unfortunately those software does not provide binary format of the generated files ....  So the most automated way I found is to :  

1. Flash my board using Altera tools (elf2flash, sof2flash and nios2-flash-programmer) 
2. Read back partitions from flash using nios2-flash-programmer -B <ADD>+<SIZE> -R zImage.tmp --base=0x08000000 
3. use srec_cat srec_cat -output zImage.bin -binary zImage.tmp 

  Doing this I have a zImage.bin adapted to my Flash with a bootloader inside. I can also dump the flash from linux and then transfer it using ftp but I cannot automate the process easily.  Does someone has a better solution ??  Best regards

[Altera_Forum]

You can use nios2-elf-objcopy on the SREC like so: 

elf2flash --base=0xc1000000 --end=0xc1FFFFFF --reset=0xc1540020 --input=zImage --output=zImage.flash --boot=/opt/altera/nios2eds/components/altera_nios2/boot_loader_cfi.srec && nios2-elf-objcopy -I srec -O binary zImage.flash /data/nios/nios2-linux/zImage.bin