Backup Gordon

Joel Newkirk freerunner at newkirk.us
Sat Oct 11 20:28:37 CEST 2008


On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:34:00 +0200, "Thomas Seiler" <thseiler at gmail.com>
wrote:
> hi,
> 
>> When flashing, they make a big deal about having to use the the version
> of
>> dfu-util that goes with the distro you are flashing.  For example, to
>> upgrade from om2007.2 to om2008.8 (ASU), you need to download the
> dfu-util
>> for om2008.8.
> 
> Hm, as far as I know, the DFU protocol is a USB standard protocol, so
> all the dfu-utils from the various distributions should behave
> identically as far as downloading of images to the device is
> concerned. The other end (i.e. uboot on the neo) is the same for all
> distributions anyway :-) So you should go for the most recent version
> you can find :-)
> 
> There have been recent fixes for the upload direction (i.e. from device
to
> pc):
> both, to uboot:  http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1843
> and to the dfu-util aswell.
> 
> So if your dfu-util/uboot combination was not able to make an upload
> (i.e. backup) of your image, then that was because of bug #1843.
> 
> I dont know the current status of these fixes in the various
> distributions, but as its quite recent work, its probably not yet
> applied.

Actually as I read it (trac gets 'muddy' sometimes, near off-topic as
people explore possible interconnections) #1843 is potentially fixed four
days ago by Harald Welte (laforge) and is the u-boot side of the problem,
while #676 is still unfixed, which is the dfu-util side of the problem.


> Disclaimer: Also, keep in mind, that updating u-boot might potentially
> brick your device to a state where it needs a debug board to be
> recovered.

This warning ONLY applies to the Neo1973 (GTA01), NOT the FreeRunner
(GTA02).  The FreeRunner has a second u-boot in NOR, which you boot into in
order to flash the u-boot that appears in NAND.  Boot from NOR with AUX
held down first then pressing power until the menu appears "U-Boot
1.3.2-moko12 (May 9, 20008 - 10:28:48)" and titled "BOOT MENU (NOR)", boot
from NAND by pressing and holding power FIRST, then pressing & holding AUX
until the uBoot menu appears "U-Boot 1.3.2-moko12 (Aug 26 2008 - 08:24:58)"
titled "BOOT MENU (NAND)".  (date on NAND will vary depending on what uBoot
you've flashed, the Aug26 is what my FR shows today)

The point being that when you flash a new bootloader to your FR with
dfu-util (or dfu-util+neotool) you boot into NOR and flash the NAND
bootloader.  This means the NOR bootloader is still there, untouched, ready
to serve your needs when you brick your FR with a broken NAND bootloader...
 ;)

j





More information about the support mailing list