Книга: Embedded Linux Primer: A Practical, Real-World Approach

7.4.6. U-Boot Image Format

7.4.6. U-Boot Image Format

Now that we have a working bootloader for our EP405 board, we can load and run programs on it. Ideally, we want to run an operating system such as Linux. To do this, we need to understand the image format that U-Boot requires. U-Boot expects a small header on the image file that identifies several attributes of the image. U-Boot uses the mkimage tool (part of the U-Boot source code) to build this image header.

Recent Linux kernel distributions have built-in support for building images directly bootable by U-Boot. Both the ARM and PPC branches of the kernel source tree have support for a target called uImage. Let's look at the PPC case. The following snippet from the Linux kernel PPC makefile .../arch/ppc/boot/images/Makefile contains the rule for building the U-Boot target called uImage :

quiet_cmd_uimage = UIMAGE $@
 cmd_uimage = $(CONFIG_SHELL) $(MKIMAGE) -A ppc
 -O linux -T kernel -C gzip -a 00000000 -e 00000000
 -n 'Linux-$(KERNELRELEASE)' -d $< $@

Ignoring the syntactical complexity, understand that this rule calls a shell script identified by the variable $(MKIMAGE). The shell script executes the U-Boot mkimage utility with the parameters shown. The mkimage utility creates the U-Boot header and prepends it to the supplied kernel image. The parameters are defined as follows:

-A Specifies the target image architecture

-O Species the target image OSin this case, Linux

-T Specifies the target image typea kernel, in this case

-C Specifies the target image compression typehere, gzip

-a Sets the U-Boot loadaddress to the value specifiedin this case, 0

-e Sets the U-Boot image entry point to the supplied value

-n A text field used to identify the image to the human user

-d The executable image file to which the header is prepended

Several U-Boot commands use this header data both to verify the integrity of the image (U-Boot also puts a CRC signature in the header) and to instruct various commands what to do with the image. U-Boot has a command called iminfo that reads the image header and displays the image attributes from the target image. Listing 7-9 contains the results of loading a uImage (bootable Linux kernel image formatted for U-Boot) to the EP405 board via U-Boot's tftpboot command and executing the iminfo command on the image.

Listing 7-9. U-Boot iminfo Command

=> tftpboot 400000 uImage-ep405
ENET Speed is 100 Mbps - FULL duplex connection
TFTP from server 192.168.1.9; our IP address is 192.168.1.33
Filename 'uImage-ep405'.
Load address: 0x400000
Loading: ##########  done
Bytes transferred = 891228 (d995c hex)
=> iminfo
## Checking Image at 00400000 ...
   Image Name:   Linux-2.6.11.6
   Image Type:   PowerPC Linux Kernel Image (gzip compressed)
   Data Size:    891164 Bytes = 870.3 kB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
=>

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