U-BOOT + Debian Family?

Board Integrations Debian family
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Hi everyone !

We are testing Mender Enterprise for our embedded solution, with the following use case:

  • U-BOOT + Debian (bookworm)
  • embedded devices, u-boot+debian is the OEM choice, x86 and aarch64. We can re-generate images and customize them, though.

Reading along the Mender documentation, it seems that U-Boot is generally supported, although, I have only read about u-boot on the Yocto part of the documentation.

We are trying to figure out:

  1. Is U-boot + Debian a supported scenario by Mender ?

  2. Is there a documentation for such scenario ? (i could only find this yocto page as current guideline)

  3. Will there be Debian-oriented patching tools for debian replicating those in meta-mender ?

Thank you very much in advance,
Wishing you a great day.

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Hi @fce,

The question is not that much about Debian + U-Boot, it’s more like - is U-Boot available for the device/platform in question?
Our usual recommendation for Debian is using the mender-convert tool as described here. On the Raspberry Pi, for example it injects a patched u-boot binary.

So it is definitely supported, but I don’t think we have a patching guide (yet).

Greets,
Josef

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Hi @TheYoctoJester,

thank you for the prompt response.

Ok. We will take an look at the usage of those binaries in order to make a similar u-boot patch, and integrate it in an homogeneous way.

I will report back here.

Thank you.
Have a nice week-end,

4

If you do not want to patch U-Boot there is also the possibility of adding the bootcount logic using scripting. To get the U-Boot glue updated when updating the kernel using a Debian package you can use some hook scripts.

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