manually compiling and flashing uboot - discoveries and one question

hi,

I have the seagate goflex net and tried to follow jeff's instructions here: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/build_uboot.htm

I managed to build my own uboot but was troubled when I tried to do:

setenv ipaddr 192.168.0.200
setenv serverip 192.168.0.100
tftp 0x800000 uboot.mtd0.kwb
go 0x800200

The last command would result in:

## Starting application at 0x00800200 ...

and then nothing else.

So I concluded my uboot would have been built wrongly but surprisingly I had the same problem when I used Jeff's uboot image http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/files/uboot/uboot.mtd0.goflexnet.jeff-2010-10-23.kwb.

Surprisingly, when I tried to do the same with the original uboot Jeff supplies here: http://jeff.doozan.com/debian/uboot/files/uboot/uboot.mtd0.goflexnet.original.kwb it did work!

So concluding: the above procedure in the original uboot only works with the original uboot image but not with the one you build yourself or the one from Jeff.

Assuming that enough people would have used Jeff's uboot so that I could be sure enough it would work even though above method did not I tried to flash it into my nand anyways using:

tftp 0x800000 uboot.mtd0.kwb
nand erase 0x000000 0x80000
nand write.e 0x800000 0x000000 0x80000
reset

This worked and now I'm greeted with:

U-Boot 2010.09 (Oct 23 2010 - 11:53:10)
Marvell-GoflexNet by Jeff Doozan, Peter Carmichael

SoC:   Kirkwood 88F6281_A0
DRAM:  128 MiB
NAND:  256 MiB
*** Warning - bad CRC or NAND, using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   egiga0
88E1116 Initialized on egiga0
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
Marvell>>

So gladly it worked and I'm not with a brick now! :D Though I'm still puzzeled with the bad CRC message above - what does it mean?

Surprisingly, now one can use the "go 0x800200" method to execute Jeff's uboot one loaded via tftp. So this method is only applicable to a new uboot and does not work for the original one!

Hence, when one wants to build his own uboot it is probably adviseable to first flash Jeff's uboot to gain the ability to test a new custom uboot by the "go 0x800200" method.

That said, my own uboot is still not loading with that method ("data abort" error) even though I followed Jeff's instructions to the letter. So there is something wrong with his instructions? Did somebody else manage to build his own uboot with those instructions?

Quote

*** Warning - bad CRC or NAND, using default environment

I believe this is because seagate used a more intense ECC for the u-boot area of the NAND. jeff's u-boot uses a different sector, but you'll need to have the ECC written by a 'saveenv'

During my trials with u-boot (I ended up keeping the stock one, it did fine), the load addresses seemed different. It'd hard to load a system over itself. Though I tried changing the load addr, i never got it to TFTP either.

since you obviously have a working serial console, you may be interested to see repair goflex over serial. so flash away without worries! ;)