[LEDE-DEV] Sysupgrade on Mikrotik RB912

Fri May 12 03:47:21 PDT 2017

Hello Sergey,

When using sysupgrade on an RB912 running a full LEDE 17.01.1 to install a custom image made with the image builder, the kernel is installed just fine.
Before and after the sysupgrade I booted OpenWRT so I could mount the YAFFS kernel partition and could verify that the kernel was updated and other files on the partition were removed (as a test I added a text file before).
This shows that a partition image is successfully written to mtd5 when executing sysupgrade from a fully installed LEDE.

So it seems to only be a problem when running sysupgrade from an initramfs image, which would be the way to go for a fresh install.
I used the following initramfs image:
https://downloads.lede-project.org/releases/17.01.1/targets/ar71xx/mikrotik/lede-17.01.1-ar71xx-mikrotik-vmlinux-initramfs.elf

Is there something missing in the default initramfs image?
Because I have no serial console and the ssh session is broken immediately after starting the sysupgrade, I also cannot see any error messages.

With kind regards,
Edwin van Drunen

> On 12 Apr 2017, at 14:45, Sergey Ryazanov <ryazanov.s.a at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello Edwin,
> 
> sorry, I can not help with this issue more intensively, all I could
> help is consultation via lede-devel mailing list.
> 
> Could you do the following steps to see what happened with kernel
> during sysupgrade:
> - flash firmware with help of LEDE initramfs image and sysupgrade
> - boot board with an old OpenWRT initramfs image
> - attempt to mount kernel partition (e.g. mount -t yaffs /dev/mtdblock5 /mnt)
> - if partition is mounted then show partition filesystem content
> (e.g. ls -la /mnt)
> 
> BTW, what do you mean, when you type "manually format the kernel
> partition", do you use some special utility?
> 
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 3:15 PM, Edwin van Drunen <edwin at vandrunen.net> wrote:
>> Hello Sergey,
>> 
>> Thank you for the info, but still no luck.
>> I have booted with a snapshot initramfs image and tried using the sysupgrade
>> image of 17.01.0 and a snapshot image.
>> 
>> Both initramfs images would show the same info about the NAND flash in the
>> kernel log.
>> I have 11 new boards to flash and they use two different NAND flash types,
>> but both 128MB, with 2048 byte pages + 64 byte spare.
>> On both 17.0.1.0 and snapshot the kernel would not be found and the board
>> could only boot through TFTP.
>> 
>> If after the sysupgrade I boot an older OpenWRT initramfs image with YAFFS
>> support, manually format the kernel partition and copy the kernel, the
>> system will boot just fine.
>> I also couldn’t find any differences between the sysupgrade scripts on
>> stable and snapshot, so probably there is something wrong with the kernel
>> images.
>> 
>> Is there something else I can try? Would you like to organise a teamviewer
>> session so you can see for yourself?
>> Or would you like to receive an RB912 board?
>> I am willing to donate one to you if it would result in a fix and help the
>> LEDE project.
>> 
>> Below I included relevant information from the kernel log from two boards
>> with different NAND flash:
>> 
>> RB912 with Samsung K9F1G08U0E NAND Flash
>> 
>> [    0.599755] m25p80 spi0.0: found w25x05, expected m25p80
>> [    0.605330] m25p80 spi0.0: w25x05 (64 Kbytes)
>> [    0.609842] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
>> [    0.614821] 0x000000000000-0x00000000c000 : "routerboot"
>> [    0.622978] 0x00000000c000-0x00000000d000 : "hard_config"
>> [    0.630489] 0x00000000d000-0x00000000e000 : "bios"
>> [    0.637382] 0x00000000e000-0x00000000f000 : "soft_config"
>> [    0.645228] NAND flash driver for the RouterBOARD 91x series
>> [    0.651256] nand: device found, Manufacturer ID: 0xec, Chip ID: 0xf1
>> [    0.657887] nand: Samsung NAND 128MiB 3,3V 8-bit
>> [    0.662660] nand: 128 MiB, SLC, erase size: 128 KiB, page size: 2048, OOB
>> size: 64
>> [    0.670521] Scanning device for bad blocks
>> [    0.829169] Creating 3 MTD partitions on "NAND 128MiB 3,3V 8-bit":
>> [    0.835597] 0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "booter"
>> [    0.842384] 0x000000040000-0x000000400000 : "kernel"
>> [    0.849467] 0x000000400000-0x000008000000 : "ubi"
>> 
>> RB912 with Winbond W29N01GVSIAA NAND Flash
>> 
>> [    2.971306] m25p80 spi0.0: found w25x05, expected m25p80
>> [    2.976811] m25p80 spi0.0: w25x05 (64 Kbytes)
>> [    2.981391] Creating 4 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
>> [    2.986344] 0x000000000000-0x00000000c000 : "routerboot"
>> [    2.994767] 0x00000000c000-0x00000000d000 : "hard_config"
>> [    3.002322] 0x00000000d000-0x00000000e000 : "bios"
>> [    3.009246] 0x00000000e000-0x00000000f000 : "soft_config"
>> [    3.017142] NAND flash driver for the RouterBOARD 91x series
>> [    3.025183] nand: device found, Manufacturer ID: 0xef, Chip ID: 0xf1
>> [    3.031811] nand: Unknown W29N01GV
>> [    3.035323] nand: 128 MiB, SLC, erase size: 128 KiB, page size: 2048, OOB
>> size: 64
>> [    3.043189] Scanning device for bad blocks
>> [    3.107905] Creating 3 MTD partitions on "W29N01GV":
>> [    3.113055] 0x000000000000-0x000000040000 : "booter"
>> [    3.119947] 0x000000040000-0x000000400000 : "kernel"
>> [    3.126949] 0x000000400000-0x000008000000 : "ubi"
>> 
>> 
>> Met vriendelijke groet / With kind regards,
>> 
>> Edwin van Drunen
>> 
>> On 11 Apr 2017, at 00:13, Sergey Ryazanov <ryazanov.s.a at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello Edwin,
>> 
>> On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 10:11 PM, Edwin van Drunen <edwin at vandrunen.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> My RB912 boards came with 2048-byte pages and I installed the nand-large
>> image, specifically:
>> https://downloads.lede-project.org/releases/17.01.0/targets/ar71xx/mikrotik/lede-17.01.0-r3205-59508e3-ar71xx-mikrotik-nand-large-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
>> 
>> I have installed it on 23 boards so far and none would boot after a regular
>> sysupgrade.
>> They all needed the kernel partition (MTD5) to be formatted to YAFFS and the
>> kernel manually copied.
>> I used this initramsfs image:
>> https://downloads.lede-project.org/releases/17.01.0/targets/ar71xx/mikrotik/lede-17.01.0-r3205-59508e3-ar71xx-mikrotik-vmlinux-initramfs.elf
>> 
>> This problem and the solution were mentioned before on this mailing list,
>> but I never got a definite answer on if this is normal behaviour.
>> 
>> 
>> No, this is not normal behavior.
>> 
>> Sysupgrade image now includes kernel _partition_ image, which already
>> formatted in YAFFS and contains "kernel" file. This kernel partition
>> image just copied to flash in byte-for-byte manner during sysupgrade
>> procedure.
>> 
>> Now I am curious to know if your boards are maybe different or there is some
>> other small detail I am not getting right.
>> 
>> 
>> I do not think so. The only obvious difference is firmware version.
>> For my tests I used images, which I manually built from latest
>> sources.
>> 
>> Could you try latest snapshot build, may be this could solve your
>> issues:
>> https://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/mikrotik/
>> 
>> 
>> On 9 Apr 2017, at 18:37, Sergey Ryazanov <ryazanov.s.a at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 4:04 PM, Edwin van Drunen <edwin at vandrunen.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> * Longer story:
>> The installation procedure for LEDE 17.01 on Mikrotik RB-912 boards should
>> be as follows:
>> - TFTP boot the board using the "vmlinux-initramfs.elf” image
>> - scp the "squashfs-sysupgrade.bin” image to /tmp
>> 
>> 
>> Which exactly image did you use 'nand-64m' or 'nand-large'?
>> 
>> - use sysupgrade to install the LEDE sysupgrade image
>> 
>> After a reboot the system will always attempt to boot from the network,
>> because a kernel can not be found.
>> The MTD6 partition (previously rootfs) is now in UBI format and hosts the
>> kernel and the root partitions inside.
>> But routerboot looks for a kernel in MTD5 and (probably?) only supports
>> YAFFS.
>> 
>> I was able to get LEDE to boot by doing these extra steps:
>> - TFTP boot an old OpenWRT initramfs image (14.07) that supports YAFFS
>> - MTD erase /dev/mtd5
>> - mount /dev/mtdblock5 /mnt
>> - copy the LEDE LZMA kernel image to /mnt, renaming it to “kernel” and chmod
>> a+x.
>> 
>> The kernel loads just fine from the YAFFS partition and the rootfs is
>> mounted using UBIFS (as overlay on squashfs), which is a big improvement
>> over YAFFS.
>> But now I will not be able to sysupgrade to a newer version of LEDE and
>> can’t access the kernel partition, because YAFFS is not supported on LEDE.
>> 
>> Am I missing something or is this just the way it is for now?
>> 
>> 
>> I test new sysupgrade with several Mikrotik boards (RB912 in
>> particular) and despite some ambiguous it works like a charm.
>> 
>> Most notable is selection of proper image from two's available:
>> "nand-64m" or "nand-large". You could find related discussion here
>> [1].
>> 
>> In short, you should use 'nand-64m' image for NAND with 512-bytes
>> pages, and 'nand-large' for NAND with 2048-bytes pages. All RB912
>> boards which I saw are equipped with NAND IC with 2048-bytes pages, so
>> the common choise for this boards is
>> 'nand-large-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin' image.
>> 
>> 1. Mikrotik RB411AH sysupgrade issues //
>> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2017-February/006195.html
> 
> --
> Sergey

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