Documentation: Add documentation for booting Freescale MXS SoCs

Signed-off-by: Sascha Hauer <s.hauer@pengutronix.de>

1 files changed, 119 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Freescale i.MXs
+===============
+
+Freescale i.MXs or MXS are a SoC family which consists of the i.MX23
+and the i.MX28. These are quite different from the regular i.MX SoCs
+and thus are represented by its own architecture in both the Kernel
+and barebox.
+
+Bootlets
+--------
+
+Traditionally These SoCs need the Freescale bootlets source and the
+elf2sb2 binary to build a bootable image out of the barebox binary.
+Since the bootlets are board specific and the source code is only
+hardly customisable each vendor usually has his own slightly different
+version of the bootlets. Booting with the Freescale bootlets is not
+described here, refer to the bootlet sourcecode or your vendors
+documentation instead.
+
+U-Boot and barebox have a port of the bootlets integrated into their
+source. The barebox bootlet code is derived from the U-Boot bootlet
+code written by Marek Vasut.
+
+Currently only the Karo TX28 is supported by the barebox bootlets,
+but we recommend that this approach should be followed for new boards
+and existing boards should be ported over.
+
+Booting Freescale i.MXs
+-----------------------
+
+The Freescale MXS SoCs have a multi staged boot process which needs
+different images composed out of different binaries. The ROM executes
+a so called bootstream which contains multiple executables. The first
+one is executed in SRAM and the purpose of this binary is to setup
+the internal PMIC and the SDRAM. The second image is usually the
+bootloader itself. In case of barebox the bootstream is composed
+out of the self extracting barebox image (pblx) and the prepare
+stage for setting up the SDRAM.
+    
+The bootstream image itself is useful for USB boot, but for booting from
+SD cards or NAND a BCB header has to be prepended to the image. In case
+of SD boot the image has the .mxssd file extension in barebox.
+    
+Since the bootstream images are encrypted they are not suitable for
+2nd stage execution. For this purpose the 2nd stage images are generated.
+
+Booting from USB
+----------------
+
+barebox has the mxs-usb-loader tool (derived from the sbloader tool from
+the rockbox project). If the board is connected to the PC and started in
+USB Boot mode it should show up in lsusb::
+
+  Bus 001 Device 098: ID 15a2:004f Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. i.MX28 SystemOnChip in RecoveryMode
+
+The bootstream images can be directly booted with::
+
+  ./scripts/mxs-usb-loader 0 images/barebox-karo-tx28-bootstream.img
+
+You might require appropriate udev rules or sudo to gain the rights to
+access the USB device.
+
+Booting from SD cards
+---------------------
+
+The SD images are suitable for booting from SD cards. SD cards need a special
+partitioning which can be created with the following fdisk sequence (using
+/dev/sdg as example)::
+
+  fdisk /dev/sdg 
+
+  Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.25.1).
+  Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
+  Be careful before using the write command.
+
+
+  Command (m for help): o
+  Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xd7e5d328.
+
+  Command (m for help): n
+  Partition type
+     p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
+     e   extended (container for logical partitions)
+  Select (default p): p
+  Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
+  First sector (2048-7829503, default 2048): 
+  Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-7829503, default 7829503): +1M
+
+  Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 1 MiB.
+
+  Command (m for help): t 
+  Selected partition 1
+  Hex code (type L to list all codes): 53
+  Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'OnTrack DM6 Aux3'.
+
+  Command (m for help): 
+
+  Command (m for help): w
+
+After writing the new partition table the image can be written directly to
+the partition::
+
+  cat images/barebox-karo-tx28-sd.img > /dev/sdg1
+ 
+** NOTE **
+
+The MXS SoCs require a special partition of type 0x53 (OnTrack DM6 Aux)
+which contains the BCB header. For some unknown reason the BCB header is
+inside a partition, but contains the sector number of the raw device from
+which the rest of the image is read from. With standard settings booting
+from SD card only works if the partition containing the bootloader starts
+at sector 2048 (the standard for fdisk). See the -p parameter to the
+mxsboot tool which changes this sector number in the image.
+
+Booting second stage
+--------------------
+
+The second stage images can be started with the barebox bootm command or
+just jumped into using the 'go' command.