Switch to bootstd-based boot flow on upstream u-boot?

VisionFive 2 （English Forum)
1

Hi there,

At the time of writing, upstream u-boot now has pretty good vf2 support. I’ve already tested that the most recent release (2024.01) works out of the box, but with the new bootstd things can be cleanup-ed further into the state:

  • No hardcoded partition UUID required. Auto-discover all available storages
  • No uEnv.txt required
  • Much cleaner u-boot environment without legacy distro_boot scripts and preboot hack
  • Kernel (and dtbs) can be installed/updated simply via the generated packages by make bin-deb-pkg, with the help of u-boot-update from u-boot-menu package.
  • sd/emmc disk partition will follow common pattern:
    • EFI partition for use with efi stubs
    • standalone boot partition marked with both legacy_boot (for uboot to perform auto-discover) and bls_boot (for systemd autofs), for extlinux.conf and kernel/dtbs stuffs.
    • rootfs, with almost no hacks but only generic configurations, created by debootstrap

I’ve only test with debian sid rootfs, together with integration kernel tree. But it should work with any other distribution theoretically.

I wonder if there’s any use case to stick with distroboot_cmd for generic distro support?

2 Likes
2

Great news!
Perhaps with that one 6.7 plus kernels work, in which only PCIe, HDMI timer patched went in.