2 questions

Peter Trapp openmoko at genial.ms
Thu Nov 29 22:13:20 CET 2007


On Mittwoch, 28. November 2007, Dan wrote:
> Okay, this is very interesting, I also saw this on my colleagues Neo and
> hadn't managed to fix it completely... but...
>
> I could get it to boot by selecting "Factory Reset" from the boot menu
> I also noticed that the uboot environment was broken and as a result the
> boot menu didn't have the console options on and you couldn't actually
> connect to the console.
>
> See if you can boot by using the factory reset....
>
> Dan


My phone was totally bricked. After installing the bootloader using the debug 
board I had a similar state as described in (after Result 1)

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Bricked


So I had a shorted boot menu with only two lines and no "cu" was working 
(could connect but didn't get the prompt). 

Hidding the "boot" entry in u-boot resulted in a "bad magic number". Using 
the "factory reset" button resulted in a proper booting device.

one more note: I'm not an expert on this stuff. Please be carefull and try it 
first in qemu...

WARNING READ ALL FIRST

Solution:

Beside anything else what really helped was reflashing the 

u-boot_env

I received a working env from mmontour and flashed it 
with "dfu-util -a 2" into the u-boot_env partition.

Seems that dfu-util starts counting with "1" and writes into partition "0" in 
mtd. Therefore "-a 2" results in mtd1: u-boot_env.


BE CAREFUL the wiki/Bricked tells:
<snip>
WARNING!!! Never flash an u-boot-env (mtdblock1) that does not come from your 
own Neo. It contains a partition table and bad block table that's unique for 
each Neo.
</snip>


Form http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/NAND_bad_blocks#Bad_Block_Table_.28BBT.29
I read that 
<snip>
This place is called bad-block table (BBT) and is stored as a bitmap in the 
last two good blocks at the end of NAND. To increase security, a backup of 
those two blocks is kept in the two preceding good blocks as well.
</snip>


Therefore I'm not really sure if I did something really bad (by erasing my own 
unique BBT) or if it is just ok to flash an other u-boot_env?!

At least I haven't had any problems upto know :|


Maybe someone can clearify this ?!



Result:
My neo boots properly and I can use "cu -l /dev/ttyACM0" again.
Moreover no strange problems are seen upto know.



Other Observations:
- I've actually flashed "u-boot-good-for-sd-boot-r13_0_2632_0.bin" from 
ScaredyCat but it doesn't boot out of the box. I've to go to uboot and 
press "boot". That is/was? a known bug in uboot.




be careful and hope that helps in anyway
-homyx



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