Updating Venice Firmware / Software

This page is all about updating / flashing firmware / software onto a Venice SBC.

The various components of the 'firmware' on a Venice board which you may want to update from time to time are (lowest level components listed first):

• GSC firmware
• SPL
• Linux device-tree
• U-Boot bootloader
• Linux kernel
• root filesystem

Some components above you can update individually in Linux using dd or in U-Boot using mmc write taking care to place them at the right offset.

Pre-Built Firmware

Venice Pre-Built Firmware / Software

Firmware Versioning

You can determine the firmware version of various portions of the firmware by looking for banners on the serial console. For example:

U-Boot SPL 2020.04-g0a0109fcfb (Oct 07 2020 - 19:30:09 +0000)
GSC     : v57 0x4d20 RST:VIN Thermal Protection Enabled
Model   : GW7301-00-B1B
...
U-Boot 2020.04-g0a0109fcfb (Oct 07 2020 - 19:30:09 +0000), Build: jenkins-venice-bsp-24
...
[    0.000000] Linux version 5.4.45-g43e409dc8906 (jenkins@bionic_builder) (gcc version 8.4.0 (Buildroot 2020.05.2-109-g32cec2af36)) #1 SMP Wed Oct 7 18:43:20 UTC 2020
...
Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS focal-venice ttymxc1

Gateworks-Ubuntu-gateworks-g65dac90 Tue Oct  6 23:54:49 UTC 2020
...

The above output shows you:

• Secondary Program Loader (SPL) GIT revision and build date
• GSC firmware version
• U-Boot GIT revision and build date
• Linux kernel version, GIT revision, build date and build source
• Ubuntu root filesystem version and GIT revision of the Gateworks ​ubuntu-rootfs.sh that created it (use dpkg -l | grep "^ii" to see what packages and versions are installed

Updating Firmware

This section provides instructions for updating both GSC firmware as well as boot device firmware.

There are two methods for updating firmware:

• on a live board using Serial Console and Ethernet
• using a GW16099 JTAG dongle (see below)

The various items that can be easily updated:

• GSC Firmware - Can be updated via JTAG or at runtime - see below)
• Boot Firmware (Everything up to and including the Bootloader)
• Root Filesystem (Operating System)

JTAG Programming

The Gateworks JTAG adapter (GW16099) is available in the Venice Dev Kit as well as on the Gateworks web store ​here

All Venice boards have a 10-pin JTAG header which provides:

• JTAG Programming for embedded emmc flash - see here for instructions
• Serial Console access via UART2 (/dev/ttymxc1)

Please Note:

• Linux software is supported for programming Venice (jtag_usbv4 required). Windows is not supported. (serial console through Windows does work).
• JTAG Programming of eMMC is supported by ​jtag_usbv4 - see here. Due to this being a slow process for large eMMC devices it is recommended to program boot firmware via JTAG if you brick your board and use the bootloader to install firmware when possible for speed (see #serial-ethernet below).
• JTAG Programming of the GSC firmware is supported by ​jtag_usbv4 - see below

Update Firmware via Serial Console and Ethernet from Bootloader

The quickest and easiest way to update your firmware is via Serial Console and Ethernet. You can do this either in the U-Boot bootloader (recommended) or within a Linux OS.

If updating firmware via Bootloader/Serial/Ethernet (recommended for speed) you need to setup a TFTP server to host the files for transfer. Alternatively you could load firmware files from removable storage (microSD, or USB Mass Storage for example) however you will need to deviate from the examples below. For details on setting up a TFTP server see here.

The following instructions assume your board target IP address is 192.168.1.1 and you have a TFTP server at 192.168.1.146. Adjust environment according to your network via 'setenv ipaddr <ipaddr>' and 'setenv serverip <serverip>'.

The methods you use to update the firmware depends on what specifically you are trying to update.

Update entire firmware (recommended)

Update the entire device from a Compressed Disk Image. This image includes the partition table, boot firmware, bootloader environment, as well as entire OS and kernel:

Complete Compressed Disk Images are available for download here: ​http://dev.gateworks.com/venice/images/

Procedure:

• Via U-Boot:

  #First, setup the IP and server IP as described above
  # setup network environment (use bootp or static by setting ipaddr/serverip and optional netmask/gatewayip)
  setenv autoload 0; bootp  # use dhcp for network config but do not fetch a file
  # choose the device to update
  setenv dev 2 # sets MMC device to be flashed - see mmc list
  # set your image
  setenv image focal-venice.img.gz # or whatever filename is used, with any tftp server directories in front of the filename
  # update
  run update_all
  

  • This is what the update_all script does if your curious:

    update_all=tftpboot ${loadaddr} ${image} && gzwrite mmc ${dev} ${loadaddr} ${filesize}
    

• Via Linux (when the volume is unmounted):

  # fetch your file
  cd /tmp
  wget http://dev.gateworks.com/venice/images/focal-venice.img.gz
  # uncompress and write to the emmc device
  zcat focal-venice.img.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M
  

Updating just the boot firmware

Updating the Boot firmware via this method includes the SPL, U-Boot, the device-tree, and the ATF. The method here specifically does not update the disk partition table at the beginning of the boot device as that really has nothing to do with the boot firmware. This method also does not destroy any current U-Boot environment.

Note that the IMX8 BOOT ROM fetches code starting at a 33K offset (in order to reserve everything below that for things like disk partition tables).

The latest pre-built Bootloader image for Venice is available for download here: ​http://dev.gateworks.com/venice/boot_firmware/flash.bin

Procedure:

• Via U-Boot:

  # setup network environment (use bootp or static by setting ipaddr/serverip and optional netmask/gatewayip)
  setenv autoload 0; bootp  # use dhcp for network config but do not fetch a file
  # choose the device to update
  setenv dev 2 # sets MMC device to be flashed - see mmc list
  # set your image
  setenv image flash.bin # with any tftp server directories in front of the filename
  # update
  run update_firmware
  

  • This is what the update_firmware script does if your curious:

    update_firmware=tftpboot $loadaddr $image && setexpr blkcnt $filesize + 0x1ff && setexpr blkcnt $blkcnt / 0x200 && mmc dev $dev && mmc write $loadaddr 0x42 $blkcnt
    

• Via Linux:

  # fetch your file
  cd /tmp
  wget http://dev.gateworks.com/venice/boot_firmware/flash.bin
  # uncompress and write to the emmc device to 33K offset
  dd if=flash.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1K seek=33
  

Updating just the root filesystem

Updating the root filesystem from a 'compressed filesystem image' is easily done in U-Boot or Linux.

Note that Gateworks does not host any pre-built filesystem images on our servers but the Venice BSP builds one for you from a downloaded rootfs tarball when you build the ubuntu-image target. The file is in the bsp directory as focal-venice.ext4 and can be compressed with gzip focal-venice.ext4

Procedure:

• Via U-Boot:

  # setup network environment (use bootp or static by setting ipaddr/serverip and optional netmask/gatewayip)
  setenv autoload 0; bootp  # use dhcp for network config but do not fetch a file
  # choose the device to update
  setenv dev 2 # sets MMC device to be flashed - see mmc list
  # set your image
  setenv image rootfs.ext4.gz # with any tftp server directories in front of the filename
  # update
  run update_rootfs
  

  • This is what the update_rootfs script does if your curious:

    update_rootfs=tftpboot $loadaddr $image && gzwrite mmc $dev $loadaddr $filesize 100000 1000000
    

  • Note gzwrite is used so the filesystem image must be compressed with 'gzip' (otherwise you could use mmc write manually). The data (ie type of filesystem or content ) does not matter here
  • Note the flash offset is 0x1000000 blocks which is 16MiB
  • Note the dev and image env variables are used by this script
• Via Linux:

  # fetch your file
  cd /tmp
  wget http://sever/rootfs.ext4.gz
  # uncompress and write to the emmc device to 16M offset
  dd if=flash.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M seek=16
  

TFTP Error Troubleshooting

There are many reasons why TFTP may fail including:

• firewall issue keeping your TFTP server for being accessible (make sure you can ping it!)
• invalid network configuration (netmask, gatewayip, ipaddr, serverip) - again make sure you can ping it!
• 'TFTP error: trying to overwrite reserved memory...' - indicates you are trying to transfer a file that is larger than system memory. You will need to split the file into chunks and flash them individually at the right offsets

Updating GSC firmware

The GSC firmware is updated via the gsc_update application running under Linux as described at on the gsc wiki. While it takes only a few seconds to update there is no recovery for a failed update. Gateworks has ensured that this update is robust but can not survive a power-cut or kernel crash in the middle of the update. Updates to the GSC firmware are expected to be rare.

Update GSC Firmware via JTAG

To update the GSC firmware via JTAG download the jtag_usbv4 application on a Linux x86 host from ​here and execute as follows:

./jtag_usbv4 -m gsc_7000_v57.txt

Note that the ftdi_sio kernel module must not be loaded (sudo rmmod ftdi_sio) and you may need to run this command as root by pre-pending a sudo depending on the configuration of your linux host.

For more details please see:

• Gateworks JTAG wiki page