Unable to read or write from system SPI flash memory.

[Andrew Jeffery]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019, at 14:53, AKASH G J wrote:
> I flashed OpenBMC image to system flash using pflash. After power-off, 
> I tried to boot the BMC (Aspeed AST-2500) from the system flash. For 
> that I used the command *bootm <system flash address>* in u-boot 
> prompt. That gives error "no image found".

Akash, I can't help you any further if you do not give me the exact commands
you are using to flash the system and verify your claims. For instance, there's
no reason to abstract `<system flash address>` here and it's value is actually
crucial to understanding what you are trying to do.

Please, literally copy and paste the output of your console into your response.
Please do not edit it, do not type it out by hand, do not invent or abstract the
commands that you're executing. Without that I'm going to leave it for
someone else to help.

That said, bootm expects a kernel image in memory, not the address of the
system flash. As far as I'm aware, if you're providing anything other than the
kernel address it won't work. If you want to just start executing instructions
at some random address, the `go` command is what you need:

```
root at witherspoon:~# reboot -ff
Rebooting.[42291.288011] reboot: Restarting system



U-Boot 2016.07 (Feb 19 2019 - 10:48:12 +0000)

       Watchdog enabled
DRAM:  496 MiB
Flash: 32 MiB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   aspeednic#0
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
ast#
ast# help go
go - start application at address 'addr'

Usage:
go addr [arg ...]
    - start application at address 'addr'
      passing 'arg' as arguments
ast# go 0
## Starting application at 0x00000000 ...


U-Boot 2016.07 (Feb 19 2019 - 10:48:12 +0000)

       Watchdog enabled
DRAM:  496 MiB
Flash: 32 MiB
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   aspeednic#0
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
ast#
```


Andrew

> 
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 5:33 AM Andrew Jeffery <andrew at aj.id.au> wrote:
> > 
> >  
> >  On Mon, 18 Feb 2019, at 15:04, AKASH G J wrote:
> >  > I wrote a bootable version of OpenBMC Linux image in system SPI flash. 
> >  > 
> >  > I tried to boot it before power-off, it was successfully booted. Then I 
> >  > tried to boot the same, that time it was unsuccessful.
> >  
> >  But you just said you flashed an OpenBMC image to the system flash. 
> >  That's never going to work. You need the host firmware on the host
> >  flash to successfully boot the host, and OpenBMC is not the host
> >  firmware.
> >  
> >  Am I understanding you correctly?
> >  
> >  > 
> >  > Do I need to make any change in the Linux device tree for resolving this issue?
> >  > 
> >  > On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 8:15 AM Andrew Jeffery <andrew at aj.id.au> wrote:
> >  > > 
> >  > > 
> >  > > On Fri, 15 Feb 2019, at 16:03, AKASH G J wrote:
> >  > > > I just powered off the entire board. After that the data is not present in
> >  > > > the SPI1 flash. But before power-off it was there.
> >  > > 
> >  > > How were you verifying the data was there before the poweroff?
> >  > > 
> >  > > > 
> >  > > > We are using OpenBMC Linux version 4.18.7 and pflash v6.1
> >  > > 
> >  > > Thanks for the versions. Should be handy as we dig deeper.
> >  > > 
> >  >
> >  
>