NRF5340 MCUboot is incompatible with PacketCraft and Large Application

Question

We finished our application on the NRF5340 and need to do firmware updates and are unable due to the current criteria:

NRF53 firmware update over USB CDC ACM (which needs at least 0x10000 rather than 0xC000) 
 Our application is large and is over 920KB (which needs large primary slot) 
 Packet craft network core

We found many unopen tickets about MCUboot forcing having a secondary partition and crashing on the slot size despite using the config CONFIG_SINGLE_APPLICATION_SLOT. This would be perfect for our application, because we are okay with setting it into recovery mode. We also tried to look into editing the pm_static.yml file but found on editing that the device crashes on boot even giving proper space. Please advise on how we can use packet craft on the network core, doing firmware updates on USBCDC, and having a large application. 
 
 Thank you for your time!

ernieforzano · Accepted Answer

Hi! We figured it out!! For anyone who needs an answer for this, there are two main options for the NRF5340 with MCUboot and your application is large (larger then the allowed 400k for both slot0 and slot1) and we needed USB as well: 
 
 need to be able to update just the application core (CONFIG_SINGLE_APPLICATION_SLOT) 
 need to update the the application and network core (CONFIG_SINGLE_APPLICATION_SLOT and CONFIG_NRF53_RECOVERY_NETWORK_CORE)

For, the first option you should be able to use this example USB_CDC or the serial example. (There are a number of options, waiting for boot, button, USB in these examples .) 
 For the second option , there are a few things you will have to do. For most of this we are mainly combining the files for mcuboot_serial_recovery_cdc_acm and mcuboot_netcore_serial_recovery examples : 
 
 For your prj.conf include 
 
 CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_IMAGE_VERSION="0.0.0+0"
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
CONFIG_NRF53_UPGRADE_NETWORK_CORE=y
CONFIG_ADD_MCUBOOT_MEDIATE_SIM_FLASH_DTS=y
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM=y
CONFIG_LOG=n
CONFIG_LOG_MODE_MINIMAL=y

For your child_image/mcu_boot.conf
 
 #
# Copyright (c) 2022 Nordic Semiconductor
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-Nordic-5-Clause
#

CONFIG_MAIN_STACK_SIZE=10240
# Flash
CONFIG_FLASH=y

# Enable MCUboot Serial Recovery
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_SIZE_OPTIMIZATIONS=y
CONFIG_SINGLE_APPLICATION_SLOT=y

# MCUBoot serial
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_SERIAL_DIRECT_IMAGE_UPLOAD=y

# Point Serial Recovery to CDC_ACM
CONFIG_BOOT_SERIAL_CDC_ACM=y
CONFIG_PM_PARTITION_SIZE_MCUBOOT=0x10000

# Decrease memory footprint
CONFIG_CBPRINTF_NANO=y
CONFIG_TIMESLICING=n
CONFIG_BOOT_BANNER=n
CONFIG_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_CONSOLE_HANDLER=n
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=n
CONFIG_LOG=n
CONFIG_RESET_ON_FATAL_ERROR=n

# The following configurations are required to support serial recovery of the
# network image
CONFIG_PCD_APP=y

CONFIG_FLASH_SIMULATOR=y
CONFIG_FLASH_SIMULATOR_DOUBLE_WRITES=y
CONFIG_FLASH_SIMULATOR_STATS=n

CONFIG_BOOT_IMAGE_ACCESS_HOOKS=y
CONFIG_NRF53_RECOVERY_NETWORK_CORE=y
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_INDICATION_LED=y

We needed USB so we included pm_static.yml for increasing the size for the USB_CDC 
 
 mcuboot:
 address: 0x0
 end_address: 0x10000
 placement:
 before:
 - mcuboot_primary
 region: flash_primary
 size: 0x10000

Edit the CMAKE for C:
cs\v2.4.0
rf\modules\mcuboot\CMakeLists.txt and put (this is where we messed up before because we needed to put network core starting address which we found was 0x1008800. We used a slot size of 0x40000 of the primary_bootloader1). This should get you passed the img_tool.py error.

If you are using packet craft (NRF5340 audio binary), you have two more steps:
 
 Edit the 	ools\buildprog\ble5-ctr-rpmsg_sign.py (the size of our slot, because its hardcoded to look for the secondary slot, which we don't want or need).

When building your audio application, we found creating and building the audio example with CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCU enabled was easiest to getting the MCUBOOT firmware update file. 
 
 NOTE: You may have to edit the nrf5340_audio\dfu\conf\Kconfig.dfu to 
 
 AUDIO_DFU to 1 and 
 
 B0N_MINIMAL to y.

Once you build you will have a file build\ble5-ctr_net_core_update.bin
 
 This is the way to update the network core.

Finally, we can update our device over the mcumgr. Reset your device and hold down your button or your preferred way to get it into boot loader mode then: 
 
 for updating your application 
 
 mcumgr --conntype serial --connstring COM49 image upload -e build\zephyr\app_update.bin -n 1

for updating your network core
 
 mcumgr --conntype serial --connstring COM49 image upload -e build\zephyr
et_core_app_update.bin -n 3

We are now done!! Hope this helps anyone in the same predicament.

NRF5340 MCUboot is incompatible with PacketCraft and Large Application

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