MCUBoot Issues

[wliao]

Hi,

We were testing MCUboot uisng nRF52 Dev Kit and ran into an issue that updated firmware in slot1 couldn't be booted:

Since we don't need bootloader upgradability, CONFIG_SECURE_BOOT was not enabled.

After we used DFU subsystem API function flash_img_buffered_write() to write the image to slot 1, we used MCUBoot API boot_request_upgrade() to mark the image in slot 1 as test or permanent. The old image at slot 0 still got running during next reboot / power reset.

The nRF Connect SDK version we used is v2.4.0.

So my questions are:

1. Why after the updated image was flashed to slot 1, it didn't get swapped with slot 0 and ran at next reboot?

2. Which hex file should be used to flash slot1? Should app_signed.hex be used?

3. After the device was flashed with merged.hex and rebooted, there's no indication that the bootloader was verifying the image at slot 0 which it's trying to boot from. Is it normal?

Thanks for your help!

[kuchx]

Hello, 

I've basically stumbled upon the same issue as the original post, only for data transfer I am using CoAP blockwise. With flash_img_buffered_write() FW writes chunks in slot 1 and with boot_request_upgrade(BOOT_UPGRADE_TEST) I set the flag that on next reset the slot 1 FW should be started and it should be running till next reset to flip back to the original, as I understood. And I am calling  sys_reboot(SYS_REBOOT_COLD) for system reset (need a FW reset since button reset is not an option). Based on this exercise, I need to download app_update.bin to device, which is exactly what I do.

After the reset I get this output:

I: Starting bootloader
I: Primary image: magic=unset, swap_type=0x1, copy_done=0x3, image_ok=0x3
I: Secondary image: magic=good, swap_type=0x2, copy_done=0x3, image_ok=0x3
I: Boot source: none
I: Image index: 0, Swap type: test
I: Bootloader chainload address offset: 0x10000

from MCUboot and device continues with slot 0 image. I tried to mark current running image (slot 0) as confirmed before DL thought that might help but the function returned error

So can you clarify what do you mean by:

1. Flag it for test as you already did
2. Flag it with confirm 

I just need to set slot 1 fw as test using boot_request_upgrade() and immediately after set it as confirmed with the same function? 

Edit: Sorry I misunderstood. boot_request_upgrade sets only test or permanent run of FW. But still, how can I confirm image, if the MCUboot never runs slot 1 image?

[AHaug]

Hi kuchx

Thank you for sharing 

kuchx said:

Edit: Sorry I misunderstood. boot_request_upgrade sets only test or permanent run of FW. But still, how can I confirm image, if the MCUboot never runs slot 1 image?

No worries, to my understanding this API should help you https://docs.zephyrproject.org/apidoc/latest/group__mcuboot__api.html :) 

If you have any additional follow ups that are urgent I would recommend you raise the questions as a new Devzone case, since the original question in this case has been resolved, so answer time might be shorter in a new case

Kind regards,
Andreas