This board ships with an ancient 14.07-based OpenWrt using block2mtd, and
the MBR partition table contains nonsense.
It is possible to sysupgrade to an upstream OpenWrt image, but the
legacy layout of the OpenWrt images start at 0xA00 in the eMMC, with
a raw uImage. The legacy OpenWrt image doesn't "own" the beginning
of the device, including the MBR and U-Boot.
This means that when a user upgrades to upstream OpenWrt, it doesn't
boot because it can't find the right partitions. So hard-code them on
the kernel's command line using CONFIG_CMDLINE_PARTITION (for block).
Additionally, the vendor firmware doesn't cope with images larger than
about 36MiB, because it only overwrites the contents of its "firmware"
MTD partition. The current layout of the legacy image wastes a lot of
space, allowing over 32MiB for the kernel and another 10MiB for the FAT
recovery file system which is only created as 3MiB. So pull those in
to allow 4¾ MiB for the kernel, 3MiB for recovery, and then we have over
20MiB for the root file system.
This doesn't affect the new images which ship with a full eMMC image
including a different MBR layout and a partition for U-Boot, because
our modern U-Boot can actually pass the command line to the kernel, and
the built-in one doesn't get used anyway.
Tested by upgrading from vendor OpenWrt to the current legacy image,
from legacy to itself, to the previous legacy layout, and then to
finally the full-system image.
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
(cherry picked from commit 6eb63019af)
The bootloader for legacy builds can't set it, so we end up unable to
log in on the serial port.
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
(cherry picked from commit ea9ef8c945)
While finalizing support for the U7623 with 512MB, I made an embarresing
error and configured 1GB RAM for the board. I also forgot to move memory
from the dtsi and to the dts. This commit takes care of my mistakes.
While I am confessing my mistakes, I also note that I made a mistake in
the commit message of the initial U7623 commit. It is the .bin-file, and
not the .gz file that shall be sent to the device via tftp.
v1->v2:
* Remove redundant memory node (thanks Jonas Gorski)
Signed-off-by: Kristian Evensen <kristian.evensen@gmail.com>
The changed applied to BananaPi R2 in upstream commit c0b0d540db1a,
which was backported to 4.14 in 4.14.53, is also required for the U7623.
Without updating the memory node, the board refuses to boot.
Fixes: d0839e020d ("kernel: bump 4.14 to 4.14.53")
Signed-off-by: Kristian Evensen <kristian.evensen@gmail.com>
This commit adds support for the MT7623A-based UniElec U7623-02 router,
with eMMC storage and 512MB RAM. The router can be delivered with NAND
Flash and more memory, but I only have access to the one configuration.
The DTS is structured in such a way that adding support for
more/different storage/memory should be straight forward.
The device has the following specifications:
* MT7623A (quad-core, 1.3 GHz)
* 512MB RAM (DDR3)
* 8GB storage (eMMC 4.5)
* 2x normal miniPCIe slots
* 1x miniPCIe slot that is connected via an internal USB OTG port
* 5x 1Gbps Ethernet (MT7530 switch)
* 1x UART header
* 1x USB 3.0 port
* 1x SATA 3.0
* 1x 40P*0.5mm FPC for MIPI LCD
* 1x SIM slot
* 12x LEDs (2 GPIO controlled)
* 1x reset button
* 1x DC jack for main power (12V)
The following has been tested and is working:
* Ethernet switch
* miniPCIe slots (tested with Wi-Fi cards)
* USB 3.0 port
* sysupgrade
* reset button
Not working:
* The miniPCIe connected via USB OTG. For the port to work, some MUSB
glue must be added. I am currently in the process of porting the glue
from the vendor SDK.
Not tested:
* SATA 3.0
* MIPI LCD
Installation:
The board ships with u-boot, and the first installation needs to be done
via the bootloader using tftp. Step number one is to update the MBR of
the eMMC, as the one that ships with the device is broken. Since the
device can ship with different storage sizes, I will not provide the
exact steps for creating a valid MBR. However, I have made some
assumptions about the disk layout - there must be one 8MB recovery
partition (FAT32) and a partition for the rootfs (Linux).
The board loads the kernel from block 0xA00 (2560) and I have reserved
32MB for the kernel (65536 blocks). I have aligned the partitions on the
erase block size (4096 byte), so the recovery partition must start on
block 69632 and end on 86016 (16385 sectors). The rootfs is assumed to
start on sector 90112.
In order to install the mbr, you run the following commands from the
u-boot command line:
* tftpboot ${loadaddr} <name of mbr file>
* mmc device 0
* mmc write ${loadaddr} 0x00 1
Run the following commands to install + boot OpenWRT:
* tftpboot ${loadaddr} openwrt-mediatek-mt7623-7623a-unielec-u7623-02-emmc-512m-squashfs-sysupgrade-emmc.bin.gz
* run boot_wr_img
* run boot_rd_img
* bootm
Recovery:
In order to recover the router, you need to follow the installation
steps above (no need to replace MBR).
Notes:
* F2FS is used as the overlay filesystem.
* The device does not ship with any valid MAC address, so a random
address has to be generated. As a work-around, I write the initial
random MAC to a file on the recovery partition. The MAC of the WAN
interface is set to the MAC-address contained in this file on each boot,
and the address of the LAN-interfaces are WAN + 1. The MAC file is kept
across sysupgrade/firstboot.
My approach is slightly different than what the stock image does. The
first fives bytes of the MAC addresses in the stock image are static,
and then the last byte is random. I believe it is better to create fully
random MAC addresses.
* In order to support the miniPCIe-slots, I needed to add missing
pcie-nodes to mt7623.dtsi. The nodes are just c&p from the upstream
dtsi.
* One of the USB3.0 phys (u3phy2) on the board can be used as either USB
or PCI, and one of the wifi-cards is connected to this phy. In order to
support switching the phy from USB to PCI, I needed to patch the
phy-driver. The patch is based on a rejected (at least last time I
checked) PCI-driver submitted to the linux-mediatek mailing list.
* The eMMC is configured to boot from the user area, and according to
the data sheet of the eMMC this value can't be changed.
* I tried to structure the MBR more nicely and use for example a
FAT32-parition for the kernel, so that we don't need to write/read from
some offset. The bootloader does not support reading from
FAT32-paritions. While the command (fatload) is there, it just throws an
error when I try to use it.
* I will submit and hope to get the DTS for the device accepted
upstream. If and when that happens, I will update the patches
accordingly.
Signed-off-by: Kristian Evensen <kristian.evensen@gmail.com>
