FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

zpm1066 — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 19:07:48 GMT

Hi Vidar,

Thanks. I doubt understand it either but will look re-check again.

I'll close this ticket. Thank you again.

Regards,
Ravi

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

Vidar Berg — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 09:44:13 GMT

Hi Ravi,

Thanks for the update. I'm afraid I don't have any obvious explanations for why these configurations caused it to fail. CONFIG_FPROTECT and CONFIG_BOOT_ERASE_PROGRESSIVELY should both be enabled by default in the bootloader and I don't see why enabling CONFIG_SOC_FLASH_NRF_EMULATE_ONE_BYTE_WRITE_ACCESS should have any side effect.:

I don't see a reason to enable FPROTECT in the application since the bootloader is responsible for configuring the flash memory protection.

Regards,

Vidar

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

zpm1066 — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 06:30:58 GMT

Hi Vidar,

Thank you for sharing the peripheral_lbs_fota_spi.zip.

It turns out that I had a couple of other Kconfig settings from one of my earlier projects that were the cause of the issue. So, removing them resolved the issue.

CONFIG_BOOT_ERASE_PROGRESSIVELY=y
CONFIG_SOC_FLASH_NRF_EMULATE_ONE_BYTE_WRITE_ACCESS=y
CONFIG_FPROTECT=y

Regards,
Ravi

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

zpm1066 — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 21:52:59 GMT

Hi Vidar,

Thanks.

It's odd, as I already had the external driver check Kconfig.

# Enable MCUboot
SB_CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y

# Configure bootloader to use more than one slot
SB_CONFIG_MCUBOOT_MODE_SINGLE_APP=n

# Use external 4MB SPI NOR Flash
SB_CONFIG_PM_EXTERNAL_FLASH_MCUBOOT_SECONDARY=y
SB_CONFIG_PM_OVERRIDE_EXTERNAL_DRIVER_CHECK=y

I'll check again and update you shortly.

Regards,

Ravi

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

Vidar Berg — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:34:32 GMT

Thank you. CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU no longer selects the QSPI NOR driver as it did in earlier SDK versions, so it should not prevent you from selecting the SPI NOR driver.

Here is the same sample for the nRF52840 DK board except this version uses the SPIM3 instead of the QSPI for the exernal flash:

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../peripheral_5F00_lbs_5F00_fota_5F00_spi.zip

The key and maybe not obvious difference is that 'SB_CONFIG_PM_OVERRIDE_EXTERNAL_DRIVER_CHECK' needs to be enabled when you want to use the SPI NOR driver instead.

Best regards,

Vidar

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

zpm1066 — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 01:39:41 GMT

Hi Vidar,

Thank you for your quick response and the attached project. As always, it's much appreciated.
Regarding the upload issue: The message times out and then displays a "flash write failed: 12" error in the RTT/UARTconsole output and the nRF Connect Device Manager.

I've also identified the cause of the issue. As I suspected, it was a misconfiguration.

Custom device under test:: nRF52840 board with 4MB SPI_NOR flash.(Sorry, I forgot to mention this earlier)
NRF Connect SDK : v2.9.0
Boot signature key file: ECDSA_P256 custom keys

With the custom nRF52840 board using the SoC Flash, FOTA over BLE works fine when using Kconfig CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU.

However, this doesn't work if the external flash on the device is SPI_NOR flash.

A few NCS releases back, someone reported that CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU used QSPI_NOR. I thought the issue (bug?) was resolved.

Advertising successfully started
Connected
Security changed: 88:AE:07:41:7D:47 (public) level 4
[00:00:51.381,225] <wrn> bt_l2cap: Ignoring data for unknown channel ID 0x003a
[00:00:53.636,383] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
[00:00:53.636,779] <inf> mcuboot_util: Image index: 0, Swap type: none
[00:00:53.636,840] <err> mcumgr_img_grp: Irrecoverable error: flash write failed: 12

Anyway, if I explicitly list and use the Kconfig fragments defined in CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU, then FOTA over BLE with the external flash works fine.

I've now completed several tests for FOTA over BLE using both SoC and SPI NOR Flash with NCS v2.9.0. All works fine with nRF Connect Device Manager.

# here, using a list of Kconfig fragments in place of CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU
CONFIG_MCUMGR=y

# Configure dependencies for CONFIG_MCUMGR 
CONFIG_NET_BUF=y
CONFIG_ZCBOR=y
CONFIG_CRC=y

# Configure MCUMGR transport to UART
CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_BT=y

# Enable the Bluetooth mcumgr transport
CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_BT_CONN_PARAM_CONTROL=y

# Configure dependencies for CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_IMG 
CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER=y

# Configure dependencies for CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER 
CONFIG_STREAM_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y

# Enable MCUMGR management for both OS and Images
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_OS=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_IMG=y
CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_OS_BOOTLOADER_INFO=y

CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_BT_REASSEMBLY=y
CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU_SPEEDUP=y

# Configure dependencies for CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_BT
CONFIG_BASE64=y

I did check the /opt/nordic/ncs/v2.9.0/nrf/samples/common/mcumgr_bt_ota_dfu/Kconfig to see if NORDIC_QSPI_NOR is still a requirement for it but didn't see it in the Kconfig, unless the dependency is specified elsewhere.

It would be nice to have CONFIG_NCS_SAMPLE_MCUMGR_BT_OTA_DFU that works for both

NORDIC_QSPI_NOR and SPI_NOR flash. Any chance you could follow up on this with dev? Thanks.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nordic teams for the excellent nRF Connect SDK training courses.

Many thanks to you and your colleagues in Support for the on-going effort to bring the courses up to NCS v2.9.0. We're almost there! It's much appreciated!

Best Regards,
Ravi

RE: FOTA over BLE using external flash (nRF Connect SDK 2.9.0) - upload to device stuck

Vidar Berg — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 22:05:52 GMT

Hi Ravi,

I can't think of any reason why it would get stuck in the upload state. Does it stay like this until you exit the app, or does it time out eventually?

I quickly tested FOTA with the peripheral_lbs sample in SDK v2.9.0 and have included the modified project I used for this test below. Maybe you can compare your configurations with this one?

Files I added in this project:

boards\nrf52840dk_nrf52840.conf // enable DFU related configuarations in app
boards\nrf52840dk_nrf52840.overlay // select qspi flash dev for external memory region
sysbuild\mcuboot.overlay // select qspi flash dev for external memory region
sysbuild\mcuboot.conf // enable QSPI NOR driver (requires multithreading)
sysbuild.conf // enable bootloader and placement of secondary slot in external flash

Regards,

Vidar

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../peripheral_5F00_lbs_5F00_fota.zip