[OpenPower-Firmware] Can't flash compiled image - Invalid PNOR image

[Stewart Smith]

Patryk Duda <pdk at semihalf.com> writes:
> I'm trying to debug why operating system is not receiving interrupts
> from network card (sometimes network card hangs during tests). It
> turned out that OPAL is not unmasking interrupt. So, I want to update
> skiboot to the latest version, but I can't find appropriate PNOR
> image, even version from 05.01.2018 has skiboot 5.4.2. i'm working on
> 8001-12C and I want to prepare image using p8dtu-op-build repository
> (https://github.com/supermicro/p8dtu-op-build) but set newest skiboot
> version in config. Everything goes well, but when I want to flash
> image using pUpdate, I get:
>
> Abnormal PNOR image size (0x2000000)
> Version info are not available.
> If the PNOR update fails, PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
> Transfer data ................
> validating PNOR image ................
> Image validation failed.
> Invalid PNOR image!
> ERROR: failed to update PNOR. [0xffffffff]
>
> Probably I forgot about some important step, or maybe my idea is
> wrong. Could you help to resolve this issue?

IIRC the pUpdate utility does some extra validation on the image (I have
no idea what though, it's an opaque process even to me).

What you can do however is use pflash from the host to flash just
skiboot.

If you don't have a compiled pflash binary, you can build it from
skiboot source ("cd external/pflash; make").

You'll want to do this:
pflash -e -f -P PAYLOAD -p skiboot.lid.xz

That just writes a new skiboot, which will be run on reboot. It avoids
any checks that pUpdate may do. So, you can flash something that doesn't
boot - but if you do, you can always use pUpdate or BMC UI to flash back
to a known good image.

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.