Unable to boot nRF54L15DK with TF-M and MCUBoot

[bvalletta344]

Hi,

I'm having an issue just booting my nRF54L15-DK when building a basic app with TF-M and MCUboot configured, I am using sysbuild to build everything.I am using the latest v.2.8.0 NCS version of the SDK. I am also using the partition manager to configure the secondary slot for MCUboot to be mapped in the external flash of the MX25R64. Here is the boot error I am seeing:

*** Booting MCUboot v2.1.0-ncs2 ***
*** Using Zephyr OS build v3.7.99-ncs1 ***
[00:00:00.430,343] <inf> mcuboot: Starting bootloader
[00:00:00.430,660] <err> mcuboot: Failed to open flash area ID 1 (image 0 slot 1): -2, cannot continue

Debugging shows the the flash area ID isn't a part of the "default_flash_map" array (which I'm assuming is the application code region). Not sure why this is happening?

Thanks!

Bryan

[bvalletta344]

Further debugging actually shows that none of the external flash partitions are getting added to the "default_flash_map", so that is why slot 1 is showing -ENOENT (from get_flash_area_from_id()). Still not sure why it's not getting built correctly though, I am happy to share my project to see what I am doing wrong

[Kazi Afroza Sultana]

Hello Bryan,

You have figured out one issue about external flash, that's great. You can send the project file so I can look at the configuration file, .yml file and the application code also.

[bvalletta344]

Hi Kazi,

Attached is the project I'm working with. For reference, I am building for three (3) different boards:

1. nRF5340 DK --> works as expected
2. nRF54L15 DK --> Issue as described
3. nRF7002 DK --> Same issue as nRF54L15 DK

One last observation, is that the two boards it fails on do not use the QSPI for the external flash communication. Not sure if that is a clue or not, just thought I'd mention it.

3527.project.zip

Thank you!

Bryan

[bvalletta344]

Hi Kazi,

Another update here. I was able to get the expected behavior for the boards that use regular SPI drivers with the following sysbuild configuration option:

SB_CONFIG_PM_OVERRIDE_EXTERNAL_DRIVER_CHECK=y

I think this is the solution! I was only setting this in the MCUboot config and not the overall sysbuild config