Mender-converted RaspiOS image 2021-01-11 does not boot without uart enabled

Description

We had a previous ticket for bumping the RaspiOS image https://tracker.mender.io/browse/MEN-4395, which we thought was fixed with the U-Boot bump to version `2020.01`. Turns out that this fix only works when the uart is enabled during boot.

The culprit is still unknown, but the working theory is that it has to do with the RaspiOS firmware, more explicitly `start.elf` (start4.elf for RPi4), and how it interracts with U-Boot when uart is not enabled. When UART is enabled, the GPU clock (The GPU runs the start.elf binary file as the 2nd stage bootloader), is set to a fixed frequency, since this clock is divided for use with the UART during boot.

For more information, have a look at this Mender-Hub post: https://hub.mender.io/t/raspios-versions-vs-mender-convert-versions/3398/9?u=oleorhagen

Acceptance criteria:

  • Make mender-convert work the newer RaspiOS image

  • Make sure it works both with and without UART enabled (this is what burnt us last time)

 

 

 RaspiOS

2020-05

2021-01

Uboot

2019.01

 

2020.01

only with UART enabled

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None

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Ole Petter Orhagen March 29, 2021 at 7:17 AM

Ole Petter Orhagen March 26, 2021 at 1:41 PM

We have decided to bump the RaspiOS image for the 2.3.x release of mender-convert also.

Lluis Campos March 25, 2021 at 3:00 PM

Ole Petter Orhagen March 25, 2021 at 2:15 PM

Solution seems to be to enable UART in all our raspberry configurations.

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Created March 24, 2021 at 12:51 PM
Updated March 29, 2021 at 8:53 AM
Resolved March 25, 2021 at 3:01 PM