Trouble booting on Cubieboard 1 with ubldr

[Tim Kientzle]

On Oct 3, 2013, at 9:59 AM, Martin Galvan <omgalvan.86 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey everybody! I'm currently trying to get CURRENT to boot on a Cubieboard1
> using a SD card with the booting files and a USB flash with the FreeBSD
> filesystem. So far I've tried dd'ing sunxi-spl.bin and u-boot.bin to the SD
> card, then copying ubldr to its FAT16 partition, powering on the board and
> then doing:
> 
> sun4i#fatload mmc 0 0x48000000 ubldr
> 
> and
> 
> sun4i#bootelf 0x48000000
> 
> However, when I do that it gives me the following error:
> 
> Device:
> net
> ENET Speed is 100 Mbps - FULL duplex
> connection
> panic: uboot_eth0: empty ethernet
> address!
> --> Press a key on the console to reboot <--


How did you compile the U-Boot files?

ubldr makes calls to u-boot.bin, which requires
they both be compiled with the same ABI.
If you have a new ubldr (compiled with EABI)
and an older U-Boot binary, this might be the problem.


> However, I understand u-boot shouldn't be able
> run ELF files, which is why we use ubldr in the first place.

U-Boot can run ELF files with the 'bootelf' command.

But U-Boot cannot:
  * Provide a DTB to a FreeBSD kernel
  * Process loader.rc
  * Run Forth boot scripts
  * Preload modules into a FreeBSD kernel

In particular, having the boot loader provide a DTB
is critical for eventually having a true GENERIC ARM
kernel that runs on multiple boards.

Tim