AM3352 stuck at "Loading Kernel..."

Embedded Linux Discussions
21

Alright finally got time to do a bootable try again. Your original defconfig made a 1.1GB rootfs tar so I couldn’t actually TFTP flash the eMMC. I had to pair out a lot of stuff out but tried not to touch anything that could potentially alter boot behavior. I also turned off SERIAL_8250 and CPPI41, and built in the watchdog with no luck.

.config (171.4 KB)

No idea what’s going wrong.

It shouldn’t be the older u-boot, right?

22

No luck on 6.6.15-bone8 either. Let me give you the full run down and see if you can see anything I’m doing wrong.

I have a directory /tftpboot that is where my TFTP server is pointed to. I created “rootfs” in that folder. I unpacked your debian minimal 12.1 there:

wget -c https://rcn-ee.com/rootfs/eewiki/minfs/debian-12.1-minimal-armhf-2023-08-22.tar.xz
tar xf debian-12.1-minimal-armhf-2023-08-22.tar.xz

Then back in my project directory I did the export CC= to the new GCC 13.2.0

I checked out your 6.6.15 and ran the ./buildkernel.sh when it got to menuconfig I quit, copied the whole KERNEL folder to my project directory. Ran menuconfig again, added in Distributed Switch Architecture drivers, save the config.

Put my dts in the ti/omap directory and add it to the Makefile

build the kernel:

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} zImage
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} modules
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} dtbs

copy kernel stuff to the rootfs:

sudo cp -v arch/arm/boot/zImage /tftpboot/rootfs/boot
sudo cp -v arch/arm/boot/dts/ti/omap/*board*.dtb /tftpboot/rootfs/boot
sudo make ARCH=arm  INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/tftpboot/rootfs modules_install

tar up the rootfs:

cd /tftpboot/rootfs/
sudo tar -czf /tftpboot/rootfs.tar.gz *

My u-boot sees I want to flash the eMMC, so it loads a zImage and dtb that are really minimal that run a script to format the eMMC, goes and grabs the boot partition files, and then the rootfs.tar.gz, unpacks and flashes.

This process/u-boot/rootfs works perfectly with the TI BSP 6.1 kernel so I don’t think I’m doing anything grossly wrong, I just wanted to lay out every step I’m doing in case there is something different that you can see.

23

I think it was, somehow, a hardware issue. New rev of hardware seems to boot the newer kernels fine, but every now and then will hang on “Loading Kernel…” :man_shrugging: