Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Jur — Wed, 26 May 2021 12:17:40 GMT

Hi Vidar,

10.11.1 works fine indeed! Consider this solved, I'll update to 10.12.2 later when the links are fixed.
Thanks a lot for the help!

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Vidar Berg — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:55:35 GMT

Sorry about that. Download does not work for any of the new variants it seems. I'm looking into it now.

Edit: you may try version 10.11.x while I try to figure this out. The merghex bug is only present in version 10.12.0-2

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Jur — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:46:22 GMT

Hi, that sounds really promising. I'm running Linux however and the link https://www.nordicsemi.com/-/media/Software-and-other-downloads/Desktop-software/nRF-command-line-tools/sw/Versions-10-x-x/10-12-2/nRF-Command-Line-Tools_10_12_2_Linux-amd64.zip 404's for me.

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Vidar Berg — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:43:29 GMT

Hi,

Please try with version 10.12.2. It was just released and includes a fix for mergehex.

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Development-Tools/nRF-Command-Line-Tools/Download#infotabs

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Jur — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:40:51 GMT

Hi Vidar! Thanks for your reply. Im using: mergehex version: 10.12.1. I'm starting to think the output of nRF Connect (in my second update) gives a better explanation of what is going wrong.

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Vidar Berg — Wed, 26 May 2021 11:33:36 GMT

Hello,

From SDK 15.3.0 and later, we started to store the bootloader start and MBR params page address at 0xff8 and 0xffc inside the MBR region. We used UICR registers for this previously (address 0x10001014 and 0x10001018), but we changed to using the addresses in the MBR as an extra security measure because the UICR register could not be protected with BPROT/ACL. Anyway. This does not explain the merge conflict. What version of mergehex.exe are you using (mergehex --version)?

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Jur — Wed, 26 May 2021 09:38:37 GMT

After some more Googling I figured 0x00000FF8 is the location of UICR. I was able to merge the file and flash it like this:

# Erase chip
nrfjprog -f NRF52 -e

# Merge softdevice and bootloader
mergehex -m ./Libraries/nRF5_SDK_15.3.0_59ac345/components/softdevice/s132/hex/s132_nrf52_6.1.1_softdevice.hex ./Bootloader/Bootloader.hex -o _build/Merged_BL_SD.hex

# Generate bootloader settings
nrfutil settings generate --family NRF52 --application _build/App.hex --application-version 0 --bootloader-version 0 --bl-settings-version 2 _build/App_BLs.hex

# Merge app and bootloader settings with softdevice + bootloader
mergehex -m _build/Merged_BL_SD.hex _build/App.hex _build/App_BLs.hex -o _build/Full_firmware.hex

# Write to chip
nrfjprog -f NRF52 --program _build/Full_firmware.hex
nrfjprog -f NRF52 --reset

The firmware works as expected, however when trying to view this "Full_firmware.hex" in nRF connect I am still getting the following error:

RE: Mergehex: Overlapping segments detected at address 4096

Jur — Tue, 25 May 2021 16:27:57 GMT

Update, it seems like the data at 0x00000FF8 in the first image is not the MBR but something else. The Softdevice hex seems to contain the MBR:

So the two hex files do actually overlap like reported:

So the new question is: What is the data at 0x00000FF8 and how to move it?