USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Nicolas Goualard — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 09:22:26 GMT

Hi Hieu,

I am sorry for the late reply, I have been unable to work on this subject for a while.

I tested using:

    affiliation:
        - disk

in my pm_static.yml and it seemed to solve the issue.

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,

Nicolas

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Hieu — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 15:38:46 GMT

Hi Nicolas,

Abhjith is out of office, and I will continue supporting you in his stead.

I have encountered a similar issue in the past. Could you please change the pm_static.yml to list the affiliation as followed instead?

  affiliation:
    - disk

If that fixes it, then the root cause is some issue in processing the affiliation in Partition Manager script.

If not, do you think you can help me confirm the following steps can reproduce your issue?

Start from hello_world
Add your pm_static.yml
Add your overlay
Add CONFIG_APP_MSC_STORAGE_FLASH_FATFS and CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT

If the steps work, I will try to replicate the issue and investigate further.

Best regards,

Hieu

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Nicolas Goualard — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 09:35:45 GMT

But, shouldn't it already be fitting in the flash ?

0xdb000 (size of mcuboot_secondary) + 0xf25000 (size of storage_partition) = 0x1000000 (size of flash)

Unless I am missing something ?

I tried on the DK with storage_partition of size 0x25000, with the same result

mcuboot_secondary:
  address: 0x00000
  region: external_flash
  size: 0xdb000

storage_partition:
  affiliation: disk
  extra_params: {
      disk_name: "NAND",
      disk_cache_size: 4096,
      disk_sector_size: 512,
      disk_read_only: 0
  }
  address: 0xdb000
  region: external_flash
  size: 0x25000

Best regards,

Nicolas

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Menon — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:01:47 GMT

Hello,

[quote user="Nicolas Goualard"]The external flash I am using is indeed 16MB[/quote]

While reviewing the error messages in the build logs you shared, I suspect the issue might be with the pm_static.yml file. Could you try reducing the storage_partition size so that both mcuboot_secondary and storage_partition do not exceed 0x1000000? The two partitions you mentioned, from 0x00000 to 0xF80000, exceed the available 16 MB by about 512 KB.

[quote user="Nicolas Goualard"]MCUBoot does not need to handle the storage_partition as far as I'm concerned, but maybe it is the case under the hood ? Having two separate partitions is not enough to differentiate between the two functionalities ?[/quote]

I’m not entirely sure, but I believe having two separate partitions should work to distinguish between the MCUboot and flash disk for your application's logging.

Kind Regards,

Abhijith

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Nicolas Goualard — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 09:46:20 GMT

Hi Abhijith, thanks for your answer,

The external flash I am using is indeed 16MB.

There is something I do not understand, I have a few more questions if you don't mind.

The end goal is for my application to:

- be updateable, thus enabling MCUBoot and NSIB as a bootloader chain.

- store log files generated by Zephyr's logging subsystem with filesystem backend enabled. Using flash disk would make it easy to get those log files by plugging the device to a computer.

MCUBoot does not need to handle the storage_partition as far as I'm concerned, but maybe it is the case under the hood ? Having two separate partitions is not enough to differentiate between the two functionalities ?

Thanks in advance for your help

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Menon — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:35:11 GMT

Hello,

Sorry for getting back to you a bit late. I have reviewed the information you provided, and thank you for explaining the issue in detail.

What is the size of your flash? While checking the pm_static.yml file you shared, I noticed that mcuboot_secondary is set to 0xdb000 (approximately 900KB) and storage_partition is set to 0xf25000 (approximately 15.5MB). So, the total required space would be around 16.4MB. I assume your flash size is larger than 16MB. If it is not, you may need to change the start address of the storage partition to a later position to avoid overlap.

I also want to mention that integrating flash disk management directly with MCUboot is not officially supported and is considered a non-supported feature. Using MCUboot to manage complex flash disk features or a file system can be tricky and might lead to issues with security and performance. This is not a use case MCUboot was designed for, so I’m afraid the support I can provide for this issue is very limited. I apologize for that.

Kind regards,
Abhijith

RE: USB Mass Storage with MCUBOOT

Menon — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 15:06:18 GMT

Hello,

I wanted to let you know that I’ve been assigned to this case. I’ll look into it and keep you updated.

Kind regards,
Abhijith