3.1.1.2. USB Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU)

When working with USB Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU), regardless of the medium to be written to and of the board being used, there are some general things to keep in mind. First of all, you will need to get a copy of the dfu-util program installed on your host. If your distribution does not provide this package you will need to build it from source. Second, the examples that follow assume a single board is plugged into the host PC. If you have more than one device plugged in you will need to use the options that dfu-util provides for specifying a single device to work with. Finally, to program via DFU for a given storage device see the section for the storage device you are working with.

3.1.1.2.1. USB Peripheral boot mode (SPL-DFU support)

The USB Peripheral boot mode is used to boot using USB interface using SPL-DFU feature. Steps outlined here can be used on platform that support USB Peripheral boot mode.

  1. Enable the SPL-DFU feature in u-boot and build MLO/u-boot binaries.

  2. Load the MLO and u-boot.img using the dfu-util from host PC.

  3. Once the u-boot is up, use DFU command from u-boot to flash the binary images from Host PC (using dfu-utils tool) to the eMMC, or QSPI to fresh/factory boards.

  • Example provided here is for dra7xx platform.

  • Use default “dra7xx_evm_defconfig” to build spl/u-boot-spl.bin, u-boot.img.

host$ make dra7xx_evm_defconfig
host$ make menuconfig

select SPL/DFU support
menuconfig->SPL/TPL--->
   ..
   [*] Support booting from RAM
   [*] Support USB Gadget drivers
   [ ]    Support USB Ethernet drivers
   [*]    Support DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade)
             DFU device selection (RAM device) -->

Unselect CONFIG_HUSH_PARSER
menuconfig--->Command Line interface
   [*] Support U-boot commands
   [ ]   Use hush shell

  • Build spl/u-boot-spl.bin and u-boot.img

host$ make

  • Set SYSBOOT SW2 switch to USB Peripheral boot mode

SW2[7..0] = 00010000 (refer to TRM for various booting order)

  • Connect EVM Superspeed port (USB1 port) to PC (Ubuntu) through USB cable.

  • From Ubuntu (or the host) PC, fetch and build usbboot application. usbboot pre-built binaries for particular distributions may be available in Processor SDK Linux already. Here are the steps to build usbboot application.

host$ git clone git://git.omapzoom.org/repo/omapboot.git
host$ cd omapboot
host$ checkout 609ac271d9f89b51c133fd829dc77e8af4e7b67e
host$ make -C host/tools

This results in host side tool called usbboot-stand-alone

For loading spl/u-boot-spl.bin to EVM, issue the command below and reset the board.

host$ sudo usbboot-stand-alone -S spl/u-boot-spl.bin

  • Load the u-boot.img to RAM.

host$ sudo dfu-util -l

Found DFU: [0451:d022] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="kernel"
Found DFU: [0451:d022] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=1, name="fdt"
Found DFU: [0451:d022] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=2, name="ramdisk"

host$ sudo dfu-util c 1 -i 0 -a 0 -D "u-boot.img" -R

  • Now EVM will boot to u-boot prompt.

USB Peripheral boot mode on Sitara devices EVM (SPL-DFU boot mode)