Quick Start / Overview
======================
- Build the ARM Trusted Firmware binary (see "ARM Trusted Firmware (ATF)" below)
+ $ cd /src/arm-trusted-firmware
+ $ make PLAT=sun50i_a64 DEBUG=1 bl31
- Build U-Boot (see "SPL/U-Boot" below)
+ $ export BL31=/path/to/bl31.bin
+ $ make pine64_plus_defconfig && make -j5
- Transfer to an uSD card (see "microSD card" below)
+ $ dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=8k seek=1
- Boot and enjoy!
Building the firmware
ARM Trusted Firmware (ATF)
----------------------------
-Checkout the "allwinner" branch from the github repository [1] and build it:
+Checkout the latest master branch from the official ATF repository [1] and
+build it:
$ export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
-$ make PLAT=sun50iw1p1 DEBUG=1 bl31
-The resulting binary is build/sun50iw1p1/debug/bl31.bin. Either put the
+$ make PLAT=sun50i_a64 DEBUG=1 bl31
+The resulting binary is build/sun50i_a64/debug/bl31.bin. Either put the
location of this file into the BL31 environment variable or copy this to
the root of your U-Boot build directory (or create a symbolic link).
-$ export BL31=/src/arm-trusted-firmware/build/sun50iw1p1/debug/bl31.bin
+$ export BL31=/src/arm-trusted-firmware/build/sun50i_a64/debug/bl31.bin
(adjust the actual path accordingly)
+The platform target "sun50i_a64" covers all boards with either an Allwinner
+A64 or H5 SoC (since they are very similar). For boards with an Allwinner H6
+SoC use "sun50i_h6".
+
+If you run into size issues with the resulting U-Boot image file, it might
+help to use a release build, by using "DEBUG=0" when building bl31.bin.
+As sometimes the ATF build process is a bit picky about the toolchain used,
+or if you can't be bothered with building ATF, there are known working
+binaries in the firmware repository[3], purely for convenience reasons.
SPL/U-Boot
------------
$ make
This will build the SPL in spl/sunxi-spl.bin and a FIT image called u-boot.itb,
-which contains the rest of the firmware.
+which contains the rest of the firmware. u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin joins those
+two components in one convenient image file.
Boot process
As the FEL mode is controlled by the boot ROM, it expects to be running in
AArch32. For now the AArch64 SPL cannot properly return into FEL mode, so the
feature is disabled in the configuration at the moment.
+The repository in [3] contains FEL capable SPL binaries, built using an
+off-tree branch to generate 32-bit ARM code (along with instructions
+how to re-create them).
microSD card
------------
(replace /dev/sdx with you SD card device file name, which could be
/dev/mmcblk[x] as well).
-Alternatively you can concatenate the SPL and the U-Boot FIT image into a
+Alternatively you can use the SPL and the U-Boot FIT image combined into a
single file and transfer that instead:
-$ cat spl/sunxi-spl.bin u-boot.itb > u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin
# dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=8k seek=1
You can partition the microSD card, but leave the first MB unallocated (most
(Legacy) boot0 method
---------------------
-boot0 is Allwiner's secondary program loader and it can be used as some kind
+boot0 is Allwinner's secondary program loader and it can be used as some kind
of SPL replacement to get U-Boot up and running from an microSD card.
For some time using boot0 was the only option to get the Pine64 booted.
With working DRAM init code in U-Boot's SPL this is no longer necessary,
device file (see above):
$ dd if=firmware.img of=/dev/sdx bs=8k seek=1
-[1] https://github.com/apritzel/arm-trusted-firmware.git
+[1] https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware.git
[2] git://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-tools.git
[3] https://github.com/apritzel/pine64/