• Contact: port-arm
• Mentors: Jared McNeill
• Duration estimate: 3 months

IMPORTANT: This project was completed by berte. You may still contact the people above for details, but please do not submit an application for this project.

Add support for reading files from a BSD Fast File System from within U-Boot. Typically, on ARM boards where we boot NetBSD with U-Boot we require the kernel to live on an MSDOS or Linux Ext2/3/4 file-system. It would be nice if we could load a kernel directly from FFSv1 or FFSv2 instead.

This project requires access to an ARM board that is supported by mainline U-Boot and NetBSD.

Status:

Work in progress by berte

Milestones:

• Add an ffs driver to U-Boot (read-only)
• Add the following commands to U-Boot: ffssize, ffsload, ffsls
• Integrate changes with existing U-Boot packages (sysutils/u-boot*) in pkgsrc
• Update armv7.img to support booting directly from FFS.
• Modify sysinst to allow for installation without an MSDOS partition.
  • Some of this will be SoC-specific. Need to detect the SoC type and select the correct kernel/dtb and adjust partition layout to not interfere with U-Boot / SoC specific bootloaders.

Extended goals:

• Add write support to the U-Boot ffs driver
• Add an ffswrite command
• Compatibility with FreeBSD UFS
• Submit U-Boot FFS driver for inclusion with mainline U-Boot

References:

• NetBSD libsa (standalone) UFS driver
• U-Boot fstype_info struct