Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Tristen — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 19:26:11 GMT

I found another way around this and created a separate partition just for settings and added to my dts:

chosen {
...
    zephyr,settings-partition = &settings_partition;
...

This partition is in NVM so the issue is completely circumvented. I no longer see the mount errors now that the settings subsystem is no longer relying on the filesystem.

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Edvin — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 08:27:37 GMT

[quote user="Tristen"]

Here is the Zephyr log at boot:

[/quote]

So you are using Openthread. That answers one of the questions.

The lines "fs: mount point not found!!" are printed from fs.c in zephyr\subsys\fs\fs.c

There are 7 functions that can print this, as far as I can see. It is fs_open(), fs_opendir(), fs_mkdir(), fs_unlink(), fs_rename(), fs_stat(), and fs_statvfs().

[quote user="Tristen"]My project has preparatory code so I'll share the kconfig and board files instead. [/quote]

Perhaps you can modify one of the samples from the SDK to use your Kconfig and board files to reproduce the issue, then send it to me, then?

I am not saying that I do not believe you, but it will be quicker this way. Did you test this in a sample that is not using the openthread stack, and perhaps not the radio at all? Does the issue not occur there?

BR,

Edvin

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Tristen — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 21:13:56 GMT

Edvin,

It is also possible that I misunderstood the error logs and the mount point error is coming from somewhere else, perhaps another module that requires the settings filesystem. For that, I do not know how to debug an NCS project to step through the Zephyr boot in order to root cause the source of this error. Any help would be appreciated.

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Tristen — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 21:06:53 GMT

Edvin,

I see this same issue on my custom board as well as on the nRF52840DK.

[quote userid="26071" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/89578/manually-start-the-nrf5-802154-radio/375405"]

Tristen said:

I had no success initializing they settings subsystem in the internal flash when using external flash

[/quote]

This means that I am using a file system as the settings storage back-end (as opposed to NVS) via the following kconfig options:

# File system

CONFIG_FILE_SYSTEM=y

CONFIG_FILE_SYSTEM_LITTLEFS=y

# Settings

CONFIG_SETTINGS_FS=y

CONFIG_SETTINGS_FS_DIR="/data"

CONFIG_SETTINGS_FS_FILE="/data/settings"

It is my understanding that the NRF 802154 driver uses the settings module and therefore will be looking for the storage back-end. In this scenario, the filesystem has not yet been mounted which is why the mount errors are there.

Here is the Zephyr log at boot:

In my projects device tree, I unselected automount. But if I were to rebuild with automount enabled, mounting takes place after the nRF5 802154 radio is initialized and I see the same mount point not found error as above.

My project has preparatory code so I'll share the kconfig and board files instead. You should see the issue without my application just by applying the kconfig and dts since the issue happens during boot and not in the application.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../board.zip

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../1122.kconfig.zip

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Edvin — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 17:41:35 GMT

Are you using an nRF52840 DK? I was not aware that this is an issue. Did you test this using the external qspi flash on the nRF52840 DK? If so, can you please zip your project folder so that I can try to reproduce it?

[quote user="Tristen"]I had no success initializing they settings subsystem in the internal flash when using external flash[/quote]

Not quite sure what this means.

[quote user="Edvin Holmseth"]Is it the littleFS that complains about the mount point not being found? Have you tried to debug into why? What function call is it that returns an error, and what is the value of that return?[/quote]

Can you please clarify this? What does it look like when it fails? Where does the error appear?

And in case you don't reply to the above questions. Are you using Thread or Zigbee? Or are you just using the "raw" 802154 driver? If so, do you intend to use Thread or Zigbee?

BR,
Edvin

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Tristen — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 15:58:52 GMT

I’m using NCS v2.0.0. That error occurs during Zephyr initialization of the 802154 radio (NOT controlled by my application). This should be observed in any project where you enable LittleFS on external NOR flash and use it for the settings subsystem (I had no success initializing they settings subsystem in the internal flash when using external flash). The issue is apparently due to the radio loading before the file system is mounted (the settings subsystem in this case requires the file system to be mounted first). Due to the time it takes to mount the file system, my application cannot wait for it to mount (it takes about 700ms) and I require being able to manually mount after the application starts running. Therefore I need to do one of two things:

Start the 802154 radio from my application (after the file system is mounted)
Be able to use an internal flash partition for the settings subsystem AND still be able to mount LittleFS on the external flash.

RE: Manually start the nRF5 802154 radio

Edvin — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 15:39:12 GMT

Hello,

Are you using the nRF5 SDK or the nRF Connect SDK?

[quote user=""]the nRF5 802154 radio driver keeps complaining about the mount point not being found[/quote]

Is it the littleFS that complains about the mount point not being found? Have you tried to debug into why? What function call is it that returns an error, and what is the value of that return?

Best regards,

Edvin