Design proposal for dual BMC flash with "golden image"

[Lei Yu]

> - A series of patches for implementing flash locks for Macronix chips that we
> use
> - A utility which gives control of golden side, called `gftool` and providing
>   abilities to:
>   - lock/unlock golden side
>   - reboot into golden side
>   - reflash golden side from main
>

Does the lock/unlock function work on the Macronix chip only? Does it
apply to other chips?

> > That's good to know! Could you comment on the design doc and see how
> > much difference it has?
>
> Yes, I will do on monday.

Thanks, let's discuss the design doc in gerrit.

> Yes, but the watchdog series of patches is more like a hack for now.
> We're expanding the watchdog api so that it grants the user control of WDT2 via
> ioctl(watchdog start on reboot) and allows for rebooting into golden chip using
> WDT2. However the upstream kernel maintainers won't accept it as they say it's a
> driver level decision, and we're exporting it to the user. That's something they
> don't want to accept. That may be fine though as theoretically the patch set may
> be kept only in the openbmc linux kernel, but that will put an additional
> support burden on Joel and the community. I'm discussing that with Joel.

OK, thanks.
For now, we use "devmem" to manipulate the registers for testing purpose.
It's nice to have that driver, but in productions there will be no
need to use devmem nor the ioctl on watchdog, so it's not a must for
us to use the driver.


-- 
BRs,
Lei YU