ubiformat in barebox giving timeout

Question

I have a custom iMX 6UL board with Barebox (partially) functional. I have on board a Semper s25hs512t Flash being detected (after adding the necessary device id indrivers/mtd/spi-nor/spi-nor.c)

The problem - My board does not have ethernet or removable SD. I need to burn the boot loader/ flash on the s25hs512. I need to format the flash accordingly and copy the files on it.

my dtsi has

&qspi {
        pinctrl-names = "default";
        pinctrl-0 = <&pinctrl_qspi>;
        status = "okay";

        flash0: s25hs512t@0 {
                #address-cells = <1>;
                #size-cells = <1>;
                compatible = "spansion,s25hs512t", "jedec,spi-nor";
                spi-max-frequency = <40000000>;
                spi-rx-bus-width = <4>;
                spi-tx-bus-width = <4>;
                reg = <0>;
                spi-mode = <0>;
                m25p,fast-read;
                status = "okay";

                partition@0 {
                        label = "barebox";
                        reg = <0x00000000 0x00100000>;
                };
                partition@1 {
                        label = "barebox-env";
                        reg = <0x00100000 0x00040000>;
                };
                partition@2 {
                        label = "barebox-of";
                        reg = <0x00140000 0x00040000>;
                };
                partition@3 {
                        label = "kernel";
                        reg = <0x00180000 0x00800000>;
                };
                partition@4 {
                        label = "root";
                        reg = <0x00980000 0x03640000>;
                };

        };
};

on boot barebox detects the flash

Board: Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board
detected i.MX6 UltraLite revision 1.0
i.MX6 UltraLite unique ID: 241e09d4e317402a
m25p80 s25hs512t@00: s25hs512t (65536 Kbytes).  <=====
imx-esdhc [email protected]: registered as mmc1
rng_self_test: RNG software self-test passed
caam [email protected]: Instantiated RNG4 SH0
caam [email protected]: Instantiated RNG4 SH1
malloc space: 0x8eefcf80 -> 0x9ddf9eff (size 239 MiB)
barebox-environment chosen:environment.of: probe failed: No such file or directory

devinfo shows

         `-- [email protected]
            `-- s25hs512t@00
               `-- m25p0
                  `-- 0x00000000-0x03ffffff (    64 MiB): /dev/m25p0
                  `-- m25p0.barebox
                     `-- 0x00000000-0x000fffff (     1 MiB): /dev/m25p0.barebox
                  `-- m25p0.barebox-env
                     `-- 0x00000000-0x0003ffff (   256 KiB): /dev/m25p0.barebox-env
                  `-- m25p0.barebox-of
                     `-- 0x00000000-0x0003ffff (   256 KiB): /dev/m25p0.barebox-of
                  `-- m25p0.kernel
                     `-- 0x00000000-0x007fffff (     8 MiB): /dev/m25p0.kernel
                  `-- m25p0.root
                     `-- 0x00000000-0x0363ffff (  54.3 MiB): /dev/m25p0.root

but when I run ubiformat, I am oddly getting this

barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ ubiformat /dev/m25p0.barebox -y
ubiformat: m25p0.barebox (nor), size 1048576 bytes (1 MiB), 4 eraseblocks of 262144 bytes (256 KiB), min. I/O size 1 bytes
libscan: scanning eraseblock 3 -- 100 % complete  
ubiformat: 1 eraseblocks are supposedly empty
ubiformat: warning!: 3 of 4 eraseblocks contain non-ubifs data
ubiformat: warning!: only 0 of 4 eraseblocks have valid erase counter
ubiformat: erase counter 0 will be used for all eraseblocks
ubiformat: note, arbitrary erase counter value may be specified using -e option
ubiformat: use erase counter 0 for all eraseblocks
ubiformat: formatting eraseblock 3 -- 100 % complete  
ERROR: m25p80 s25hs512t@00: flash operation timed out
ERROR: m25p0.barebox: error -110 while writing 262144 bytes to PEB 0:0, written 0 bytes
libubigen: error!: cannot write 262144 bytes
ubiformat: error!: cannot write layout volume
ubiformat: Operation not permitted

Any way ahead from this?

PS : Update Thanks for help from @TrentP - I am focusing only on formatting the larger partitions so that I can write the kernel and root partition. but I have not been able to mount the ubi partition. I get the following issue (Readonly filesystem)

barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ erase /dev/m25p0.kernel 

barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ ubiattach /dev/m25p0.kernel 
NOTICE: ubi0: scanning is finished
NOTICE: ubi0: empty MTD device detected
NOTICE: ubi0: registering /dev/m25p0.kernel.ubi
NOTICE: ubi0: attached mtd0 (name "m25p0.kernel", size 8 MiB) to ubi0
NOTICE: ubi0: PEB size: 262144 bytes (256 KiB), LEB size: 262016 bytes
NOTICE: ubi0: min./max. I/O unit sizes: 1/256, sub-page size 1
NOTICE: ubi0: VID header offset: 64 (aligned 64), data offset: 128
NOTICE: ubi0: good PEBs: 32, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0
NOTICE: ubi0: user volume: 0, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128
NOTICE: ubi0: max/mean erase counter: 1/0, WL threshold: 65536, image sequence number: 1700878141
NOTICE: ubi0: available PEBs: 28, total reserved PEBs: 4, PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 0

barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ ubimkvol /dev/m25p0.kernel.ubi kernel 0
NOTICE: ubi0: registering kernel as /dev/m25p0.kernel.ubi.kernel


barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ mount -t ubifs /dev/m25p0.kernel.ubi.kernel  /mnt/kernel/
ERROR: UBIFS error (ubi0:0): 9de5a2d5: can't format empty UBI volume: read-only mount
ERROR: ubifs ubifs0: probe failed: Read-only file system
mount: Invalid argument

If I use ubiformat I get this

barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ ubiformat /dev/m25p0.kernel -y
ubiformat: m25p0.kernel (nor), size 8388608 bytes (8 MiB), 32 eraseblocks of 262144 bytes (256 KiB), min. I/O size 1 bytes
libscan: scanning eraseblock 31 -- 100 % complete  
ubiformat: warning!: 32 of 32 eraseblocks contain non-ubifs data
ubiformat: warning!: only 0 of 32 eraseblocks have valid erase counter
ubiformat: erase counter 0 will be used for all eraseblocks
ubiformat: note, arbitrary erase counter value may be specified using -e option
ubiformat: use erase counter 0 for all eraseblocks
ubiformat: formatting eraseblock 31 -- 100 % complete  
barebox@Freescale i.MX6 UltraLite Caisteal Board:/ ubiattach /dev/m25p0.kernel 
NOTICE: ubi0: scanning is finished
ERROR: ubi0 error: ubi_read_volume_table: the layout volume was not found
ERROR: ubi0 error: ubi_attach_mtd_dev: failed to attach mtd0, error -22
failed to attach: Invalid argument

devinfo

Parent: m25p0.kernel
Parameters:
  available_pebs: 0 (type: uint32)
  bad_peb_count: 0 (type: uint32)
  good_peb_count: 32 (type: uint32)
  leb_size: 262016 (type: uint32)
  max_erase_counter: 2 (type: uint32)
  mean_erase_counter: 0 (type: uint32)
  min_io_size: 1 (type: uint32)
  peb_size: 262144 (type: uint32)
  reserved_pebs: 32 (type: uint32) <=== why all PEBs are reserved?
  sub_page_size: 1 (type: uint32)
  vid_header_offset: 64 (type: uint32)

Any suggestions on what I am doing wrong. I know its something ridiculously simple. just unknown to me

Answer 1

You aren't supposed to use ubiformat on the barebox partition. It's too small. That's why it fails.

UBI is a Linux layer for putting UBI filesystems into NAND or NOR flash. The iMX6UL CPU boot ROM does not understand UBI. It can't boot something in a UBI formatted partition. It's for the root filesystem in the root partition.

Read section 8 of the iMX6UL reference manual, especially §8.6 about QuadSPI booting. This will tell you what you must put into flash to make it bootable.

Also look at the barebox_update command, which can be used to flash the bootloader from Barebox. The board needs to support it and I don't know about your board. The code is in various imx6_bbu_* functions. I'm not sure if qspi is supported, as I only see eMMC/SD,eMMC boot, NAND, and I2C/SPI. The qspi interface isn't the same as a serial EEPROM on one of the eCSPI controllers (again, see RM §8!). But perhaps it would work with an appropriate header already on the image.