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u-boot for Allwinner sunxi series of SoCs (A10, A13, A10s, and A20)
linux-sunxi u-boot is fully SPL enabled which means it supports booting directly on the bare metal with no help from the Allwinner bootloaders. U-Boot SPL fully replaces Allwinner boot0 & boot1.
sunxi Main branch, tracks upstream u-boot master. Supports A10, A13, A10s and A20.
lichee-dev NAND capable replacement for Allwinner A10 u-boot
lichee-dev-a20 NAND capable replacement for Allwinner A20 u-boot
lichee/ Unmodified mirrors of original Allwinner sources
v2013.07-sunxi.4 Current release. Functionally equivalent to v2013.07-sunxi, only adding u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin build output by default.
v2013.07-sunxi.3 Broken release. See v2013.07-sunxi.4.
v2013.07-sunxi.2 Old release. Functionally equivalent to v2013.07-sunxi, only adding u-boot.img build output by default.
v2013.07-sunxi Old release.
v2013.04-sunxi Old release.
v2013.01-sunxi Old release
v2013.01.01-sunxi Old release
v2012.10-sunxi Old stable release. Board specific SPL to set correct DRAM parameters for the board.
v2011.09-sun4i Old release. SPL support för some 512MB systems, based on original Mele A1000 DRAM settings. Do not properly power the CPU core which may cause system instabilities.
You need a suitable gcc ARM Linux GNUEABI toolchain installed and added to your PATH.
Then compile u-boot for A10 by running
make 'boardtype' CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf-
See boards.cfg for a list of known board types.
As of 2013-10-10 the list contains (in the alphabetic order):
a10_mid_1gb
a10s-olinuxino-m
a10s-olinuxino-m_fel
A13-OLinuXino
a13-olinuxino_fel
a13-olinuxino_fel_sdcon
a13-olinuxinom
a13-olinuxinom_fel
a13_mid
a20-olinuxino_micro
a20-olinuxino_micro_fel
auxtek-t003
auxtek-t004
ba10_tv_box
coby_mid7042
coby_mid8042
coby_mid9742
cubieboard
cubieboard2
cubieboard2_fel
cubietruck
cubietruck_fel
cubieboard_512
cubieboard_fel
dns_m82
eoma68_a10
eoma68_a10_fel
eoma68_a20
eoma68_a20_fel
eu3000
gooseberry_a721
h6
hackberry
hyundai_a7hd
inet97f-ii
marsboard_a10
marsboard_a20
marsboard_a20_debug
megafeis_a08
mele_a1000
mele_a1000_fel
mele_a1000g
mele_a3700
mini-x
mini-x-1gb
mini-x_a10s
mk802
mk802-1gb
mk802_a10s
mk802ii
pcduino
pengpod1000
pengpod700
pov_protab2_ips9
pov_protab2_ips_3g
pov_protab2_xxl
r7-tv-dongle
sanei_n90
sun4i
sun4i_sdcon
sun5i
sun5i_sdcon
sun5i_uart1
uhost_u1a
wobo-i5
If your board is not listed then see "Adding a new board" below
Board names ending with _FEL are configured for USB-Booting.
To build natively on ARM hard-float systems you may need to install soft-float GCC libraries. On Ubuntu ARM and the like install gcc-multilib package to get these. This is due to an u-boot upstream decision to always build u-boot soft-float on ARM.
A10 & A13 boots the SPL loader from block 8. This then loads actual u-boot from block 40 onwards, counted in 1KB blocks. Replace /dev/sdX with the device name of your media
dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8
or if you prefer to install the components separately
dd if=spl/sunxi-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8
dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=40
If using v2013.07 or earlier then the procedure is slightly different
dd if=spl/sunxi-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8
dd if=u-boot.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=32
Remember to leave sufficient space for all u-boot files when partitioning the card. Recommended to have first partition start at sector 2048 (1MB), or much higher if using Falcon boot mode. See Storage Map section below for details.
This version of u-boot support uEnv.txt, and will look for it in the first partition FAT /uEnv.txt or extX /uEnv.txt or extX /boot/uEnv.txt. uEnv.txt contains variables on the form variable=value, one per line. If the variable uenvcmd is set then u-boot will run the commands listed in this variable.
This version of u-boot supports boot.scr, and will look for it in the first partition FAT /boot.scr or extX /boot.scr or extX /boot/boot.scr. boot.scr contains your needed uboot commands for loading script.bin, kernel. initrd (optional), setting kernel parameters and booting.
To create boot.scr first make a u-boot script boot.cmd with the u-boot commands you need for booting your system. An example follows:
setenv bootargs console=ttyS0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p1 rootwait panic=10 ${extra}
ext2load mmc 0 0x43000000 boot/script.bin
ext2load mmc 0 0x48000000 boot/uImage
bootm 0x48000000
Then translate this to a boot.scr by using the mkimage command
mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr
If no boot.scr is found then it will fall back to load script.bin & kernel uImage from the first partition in FAT format
fatload mmc 0 0x43000000 script.bin && fatload mmc 0 0x48000000 ${kernel} && watchdog 0 && bootm 0x48000000
To add a new board to u-boot you need to collect some information about your board. The most reliable source of this information is to inspect the boot1 file header. Unfortunately it's not entirely trivial how to reach that.
If you have UART console with access to u-boot loaded from NAND then you can dump the boot1 file header by running
md.b 0x42400000 0x2084
send the resulting output to me (henrik@henriknordstrom.net) together with a copy of your script.bin and the name of your board.
Usually you can easily extract script.bin by holding down the key '2' on the console while booting and then connect to the device with USB cable. On most A1x devices the boot partition then shows up as a removable USB device.
If you have console access but your u-boot do not allow you to halt the boot procedure then you can try replacing uboot.bin with the generic sun4i(A10) or sun5i(A13) versions to exract the information.
If you don't have console access to u-boot but have a SD breakout board then you can push the generic sun4i_sdcon(A10) or sun5i_sdcon(A13) versions to enable u-boot console on the SD breakout board.
Be warned that you may need to livesuit the device to restore NAND u-boot version to boot the Android from NAND again.
The watchdog command can be used to set a watchdog timeout. A timeout of 0 disables the watchdog. The watchdog have an upper limit of approximately 20 seconds.
You can enable automatic watchdog support by building with CONFIG_WATCHDOG enabled. This makes the watchdog armed by default. Be warned that If the kernel is not up and running and poking the watchdog within the watchdog timeout (approximately 20 seconds) then the watchdog will automatically reboot the system.
baudrate=115200
scriptaddr=0x44000000
bootscr=boot.scr
bootenv=uEnv.txt
loadbootscr=fatload mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} ${bootscr} || ext2load mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} ${bootscr} || ext2load mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} boot/${bootscr}
loadbootenv=fatload mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} ${bootenv} || ext2load mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} ${bootenv} || ext2load mmc 0 ${scriptaddr} boot/${bootenv}
boot_mmc=fatload mmc 0 0x43000000 script.bin && fatload mmc 0 0x48000000 ${kernel} && watchdog 0 && bootm 0x48000000
bootcmd=if run loadbootenv; then \
echo Loaded environment from ${bootenv}; \
env import -t ${scriptaddr} ${filesize}; \
fi; \
if test -n ${uenvcmd}; then \
echo Running uenvcmd ...; \
run uenvcmd; \
fi; \
if run loadbootscr; then \
echo Jumping to ${bootscr}; \
source ${scriptaddr}; \
fi; \
run setargs boot_mmc;"
bootdelay=3
console=ttyS0,115200
kernel=uImage
loglevel=8
panicarg=panic=10
root=/dev/mmcblk0p2
setargs=setenv bootargs console=${console} root=${root} loglevel=${loglevel} ${panicarg} ${extraargs}
stderr=serial
stdin=serial
stdout=serial
How the SD-Card is used by u-boot-mmc, counted in 512KB sectors / 1KB blocks:
sector start size
0 0 8KB Unused, available for partition table etc.
16 8 32KB Initial SPL loader
80 40 504KB u-boot (sector 64 / 32KB for 2013.07 and earlier)
1088 544 128KB environment
1344 672 128KB Falcon mode boot params
1600 800 ---- Falcon mode kernel start
2048 1024 - Free for partitions (higher if using Falcon boot)