Unable to flash new firmware with DFU because of 'invalid address'

[BENBF]

Hello, I am reaching out to you because I am trying to implement a DFU OTA in my project in order to be able to update my firmware with Bluetooth. I have been spending some time on it as the implementation is not an easy task. For a long time, I wasn't able to build, then I wasn't able to boot, and it is just recently that I managed to correctly flash and have access to the logs. I was able to connect to my board thanks to the 'Device Manager' app, but when trying to upload a 'dfu_application.zip' file with the firmware update, I had error 10 on the app and had the following logs on my board:

00> [00:01:18.563,446] <err> flash_nrf: invalid address: 0x001bbff0:16
00> [00:01:18.563,446] <inf> mcuboot_util: Secondary image of image pair (0.) is unreachable. Treat it as empty
00> [00:01:18.563,446] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
00> [00:01:18.671,234] <err> flash_nrf: invalid address: 0x001bbff0:16
00> [00:01:18.671,234] <inf> mcuboot_util: Secondary image of image pair (0.) is unreachable. Treat it as empty
00> [00:01:18.671,234] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
00> [00:01:18.671,264] <err> flash_nrf: invalid address: 0x001bbff0:16
00> [00:01:18.671,264] <inf> mcuboot_util: Secondary image of image pair (0.) is unreachable. Treat it as empty
00> [00:01:18.671,264] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
00> [00:01:18.671,417] <err> STREAM_FLASH: Incorrect parameter
00> [00:01:18.671,417] <err> mcumgr_img_grp: Irrecoverable error: flash write failed: 10

As for my configuration it goes as follow:

Here is what our project directory looks like: build/  build-mcuboot/  child_image/  CMakeLists.txt  HC_v4.overlay  Kconfig  prj.conf  README.md  src/  utils/

Here is our child_image/mcuboot.conf:

CONFIG_NORDIC_QSPI_NOR=n
CONFIG_SPI_NOR=n
CONFIG_MULTITHREADING=y
CONFIG_PM_PARTITION_SIZE_MCUBOOT=0x32000


CONFIG_BOOT_SIGNATURE_TYPE_RSA=y
CONFIG_BOOT_SIGNATURE_KEY_FILE="root-rsa-2048.pem"

CONFIG_BOOT_MAX_IMG_SECTORS=1024

CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_PRINTK=y
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y

Here is what I added to our prj.conf to use the DFU:

CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
CONFIG_NORDIC_QSPI_NOR=n
CONFIG_FLASH_SIZE=1792
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_SPI_NOR=n
CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU=y
CONFIG_MULTITHREADING=y

Here is the totality of our prj.conf if it is of any help:

7357.prj.conf

What element am I missing ? Please feel free to ask if you need any additional informations. Once again thank you very much for your time and have a great day.

[Vidar Berg]

Hello,

The write address shown in the debug log is well above the valid address range for the internal flash. Could you create a memory report of the flash layout and post it here? You can do this using the memory report button in vs code, or with the following command from the terminal 

$ west build -t partition_manager_report

Thanks,

Vidar

[BENBF]

Also, if it can help, i noticed that if i try flashing with the app the same app as the one curently on the card, the app will tell me it has been successful and the board will show me this error:

00> [00:03:34.919,891] <err> flash_nrf: invalid address: 0x001bbff0:16
00> [00:03:34.919,891] <inf> mcuboot_util: Secondary image of image pair (0.) is unreachable. Treat it as empty
00> [00:03:34.919,891] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none

it s still an error, but a shorter one.

[BENBF]

Of course! Here is a minimal version of our project you can run on an nRF7002-DK Nordic devboard. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you need more information. Thank you very much, and have a great day.

bugHunt (1).zip

[Vidar Berg]

Sorry, I forgot to ask which SDK version you were on. I want to make sure we're debugging the same version.

[BENBF]

No worries ! Our SDK version is the v2.6.1.

[Vidar Berg]

I missed this earlier when looking at your memory report, but I see now that you've changed redefined CONFIG_FLASH_SIZE value in your prj.conf. This symbol defines the amount of the flash available to the appcore, which is 1024kB, and should not be changed. Given the size of your application, you will need to include an external SPI flash on your board to support DFU.

[BENBF]

Hello,

Thank you for your time and the information. After checking the size of our firmware, we realized we were indeed trying to put an application that was too large onto the card. As you recommended, we will try using an external flash for our DFU. Our flash is a NAND Flash (ref: W25N02KVZEIR). Can we use it for the DFU?

Thank you very much for your time and have a great day.

[Vidar Berg]

Hello,

Have you already integrated the flash in your application, and is it working? The SDK is currently only supporting QSPI/SPI NOR FLASH, not NAND. There is a PR upstream which aims to add support for NAND, but it has not been merged yet: https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pull/50690.

Instructions on how to place the mcuboot secondary slot in an external flash partition can be found in the documentation here: 

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-2.6.1/page/nrf/config_and_build/bootloaders/bootloader_external_flash.html 

But this has only been tested with NOR flash.