Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

RE: Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

Mathias Gangl — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 14:57:28 GMT

Okay, then I'll do it like that.
Thank you very much for your support!

RE: Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

Einar Thorsrud — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:50:08 GMT

Hi,

Ah, I see. Testing, I see that setting CONFIG_FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET=0x27000 in prj.conf that value is used in the config system, but the application is stil placed at 0x1000 when using sysbuild. (We only test this for thenRF52840 dongle, that has the MBR but not SoftDevice, as this is a special case).

I suggest that you use a static partition, which is essentially what is done with the dongle as well (see this old commiit and the file it points to, pm.yml.nrf5_mbr).

RE: Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

Mathias Gangl — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 11:12:06 GMT

I tried now to use the name BOARD_HAS_NRF5_BOOTLOADER instead of BOARD_HAS_UF2_BOOTLOADER and the image files have an offset of 0x1000.

But only an offset 0x1000 and not 0x27000 which I would need. In general, anything which I configure in the Kconfig.defconfig as default value for FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET seems to be ignored, it is always 0x1000.

RE: Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

Mathias Gangl — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 11:07:15 GMT

Hi!

I tried it with the blinky sample and I can find all three configs in the build/blinky/zephyr/.config file. But still the image starts at offset 0x0. The weird thing is though, I get the following output in the terminal:

Converted to uf2, output size: 75776, start address: 0x27000

But if I have a look at the image in the nRF Connect Programmer it starts at 0x0. And when I flash the UF2 image, my bootloader and softdevice are overwritten.

This is what I specified in my board files:

Kconfig:

config BOARD_HAS_UF2_BOOTLOADER
	bool "Board has Adafruit UF2 bootloader"
	default y

Kconfig.defconfig: (using 0x27000 as offset to take softdevice into account)

config FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET
	default 0x27000
	depends on BOARD_HAS_UF2_BOOTLOADER && (MCUBOOT || !USE_DT_CODE_PARTITION)

config BT_CTLR
	default BT

if USB_DEVICE_STACK

config UART_CONSOLE
	default CONSOLE

config USB_DEVICE_INITIALIZE_AT_BOOT
	default y

custom_board_defconfig:

# Enable MPU
CONFIG_ARM_MPU=y

# Enable hardware stack protection
CONFIG_HW_STACK_PROTECTION=y

# enable GPIO
CONFIG_GPIO=y

# enable uart driver
CONFIG_SERIAL=y

# enable console
CONFIG_CONSOLE=y

# Logger cannot use itself to log
CONFIG_USB_CDC_ACM_LOG_LEVEL_OFF=y

# enable USB
CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_STACK=y

# Build UF2 by default, supported by the Adafruit nRF52 Bootloader
CONFIG_BUILD_OUTPUT_UF2=y

The other files are similar to the nrf52840 dongle files.

RE: Partitions for custom boards with SDK 2.8.0 and sysbuild

Einar Thorsrud — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 13:58:37 GMT

Hi,

[quote user=""]Specifically, the fixed partition in my dts files are ignored.[/quote]

Yes, that is correct. With the nRF Connect SDK, the partition manager is used for partitioning the memory, and not the device tree. What you have in the device tree is ignored. This is regardless if you are using sysbuild or not (or hardware model v2 or not for that matter).

The approach used for the nRF52840 dongle with BOARD_HAS_NRF5_BOOTLOADER and FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET works in SDK 2.8.0 as well, so you can do the same for your custom board. I suspect that if you check the generated .config you are missing some of these configs:

CONFIG_FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET=0x1000
CONFIG_HAS_FLASH_LOAD_OFFSET=y
CONFIG_BOARD_HAS_NRF5_BOOTLOADER=y

Can you check if that is the case? If so, the next step is to look at your board fiels to understand why.