nRF9160 custom board bootloader problems

[AscherA]

Dear Nordic Team, 

I am working on a custom board  and I am currently implementing the firmware-over-the-air library via https.
For this I need to use the MCUBootloader. Unfortunately I ran into some troubles implementing the bootloader.

I am using Visual Studio in combination with the "nRF Connect for Desktop" and the SDK version 2.0.0.

To configure the bootloader I created a child_image folder in my project and in the folder I created a mcuboot.conf file like suggested in many of the Nordic devzone forum entries.

The changes in the mcuboot.conf are quite simple I changed the BOOT_SIGNATURE_TYPE to RSA and included a path for my key. Since I am working with a out-of-tree build I had to use a absolute file path for the key since otherwise the autogenerate file of the mcubootloader could not find the key file. 
Furthermore I activated the bootbanner and told the bootloader to use RTT for the logging interface. 

This seems to work fine when building the project and here is the bootloader logging information which I get:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.0.99-ncs1  ***

[00:00:03.383,453] <inf> mcuboot: Starting bootloader
[00:00:04.655,456] <inf> mcuboot: Primary image: magic=unset, swap_type=0x1, copy_done=0x3, image_ok=0x3
[00:00:04.655,975] <inf> mcuboot: Secondary image: magic=unset, swap_type=0x1, copy_done=0x3, image_ok=0x3
[00:00:04.656,402] <inf> mcuboot: Boot source: none
[00:00:04.656,799] <inf> mcuboot: Swap type: none
[00:00:05.176,513] <inf> mcuboot: Bootloader chainload address offset: 0xc000
[00:00:05.176,879] <inf> mcuboot: Jumping to the first image slot

But after that the nrf9160 does nothing and also does not start my application. 

At the end I added the  mcuboot.conf and the prj.conf files

I have searched through the forum and found some entries regarding the bootloader unfortunately none of the offered answeres helped in my case. 

I have also tried to to a simple small sample to make sure my custom board is not the problem and used the tfm_hello_world sample and added
"CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y" to the sample prj.conf. This seems to work fine so I am very sure the problem somehow originates either in my bootloader configuration or in my application itself. 

I hope someone can help me with my problem.

Best regards,

Andreas 

mcuboot.conf:

CONFIG_BOOT_SIGNATURE_TYPE_RSA=y
############################################
# Image signing private key
############################################
CONFIG_BOOT_SIGNATURE_KEY_FILE="C:/sample_folder/src/KeyFiles/custom_private_key.pem" 

############################################
#Use hardware peripherals (BPROT, ACL, or SPU) to write-protect
#regions of flash until next reset.
############################################
CONFIG_FPROTECT=n

CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_SERIAL=n
CONFIG_LOG=y
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_MODE_IMMEDIATE=y
CONFIG_BOOT_BANNER=y

proj.conf:

CONFIG_BUILD_WITH_TFM=y
CONFIG_TFM_PROFILE_TYPE_MINIMAL=y
CONFIG_TFM_BL2=n

# Reroute printk to SES Terminal
CONFIG_PRINTK=n
CONFIG_CONSOLE=n

CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_STDOUT_CONSOLE=n

CONFIG_LOG=n
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_RTT_CONSOLE=n
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=n
CONFIG_LOG_MODE_IMMEDIATE=n

# Enable GPIOs
CONFIG_GPIO=y

# Enable I2C/TWI
CONFIG_I2C=y
CONFIG_I2C_NRFX=y

# Heap and stacks
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=77824
CONFIG_MAIN_STACK_SIZE=40960
CONFIG_SYSTEM_WORKQUEUE_STACK_SIZE=4096

CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_DEBUG_OPTIMIZATIONS=y
CONFIG_NEWLIB_LIBC=y
CONFIG_NEWLIB_LIBC_FLOAT_PRINTF=y

# Uart Config
CONFIG_NRFX_UARTE0=y
CONFIG_UART_ASYNC_API=y

# Watchdog
#CONFIG_WATCHDOG=y
#CONFIG_WDT_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=y
#CONFIG_WDT_DISABLE_AT_BOOT=n

# Networking
CONFIG_NETWORKING=y
CONFIG_NET_NATIVE=n
CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS=y
CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_OFFLOAD=y
CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_POSIX_NAMES=y

# LTE link control
CONFIG_LTE_LINK_CONTROL=y
CONFIG_LTE_AUTO_INIT_AND_CONNECT=n
CONFIG_LTE_LINK_CONTROL_LOG_LEVEL_DBG=n

CONFIG_LTE_NETWORK_MODE_LTE_M_GPS=y
CONFIG_LTE_MODE_PREFERENCE_LTE_M=y

# Modem info
CONFIG_MODEM_INFO=y
CONFIG_MODEM_INFO_ADD_DATE_TIME=n

CONFIG_DATE_TIME=y

# Modem library
CONFIG_NRF_MODEM_LIB=y

# AT Host
CONFIG_AT_HOST_LIBRARY=y

# MQTT
CONFIG_MQTT_LIB=y
CONFIG_MQTT_LIB_TLS=y
CONFIG_MQTT_CLEAN_SESSION=y
CONFIG_MQTT_KEEPALIVE=10
CONFIG_NRF_MODEM_LIB=y
CONFIG_MODEM_KEY_MGMT=y

# Application
CONFIG_MQTT_MESSAGE_BUFFER_SIZE=512
CONFIG_MQTT_PAYLOAD_BUFFER_SIZE=4096

CONFIG_MQTT_RECONNECT_DELAY_S=10

CONFIG_LEGACY_INCLUDE_PATH=y

# FOTA library
CONFIG_FOTA_DOWNLOAD=y
CONFIG_REBOOT=y

# Download client
CONFIG_DOWNLOAD_CLIENT=y
CONFIG_DOWNLOAD_CLIENT_STACK_SIZE=4096

# DFU Target
CONFIG_DFU_TARGET=y
#CONFIG_DFU_TARGET_MCUBOOT=y
#CONFIG_DFU_TARGET_MODEM_DELTA=n
#CONFIG_DFU_TARGET_STREAM_SAVE_PROGRESS=y

# Settings
#CONFIG_SETTINGS=y
#CONFIG_SETTINGS_NVS=y

# Non-volatile Storage
#CONFIG_NVS=y

# Application update support
CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y
CONFIG_MCUBOOT_IMAGE_VERSION="0.1.0"

# Image manager
CONFIG_IMG_MANAGER=y
CONFIG_IMG_ERASE_PROGRESSIVELY=y

[Didrik Rokhaug]

Hi,

Did I understand you correctly that the application failed to boot when you added the bootloader?

Or did it work with a bootloader, but when you changed the settings for the bootloader, it failed?

What happens if you try to run an application built for the secure domain?

E.g. try add MCUBoot (with your added configurations) to the hello_world sample, and build for the secure version of the board (the one that doesn't end with "_ns").

Best regards,

Didrik

[AscherA]

Hi Didrik,

thanks for your help.

Yes my application fails to boot after I add the bootloader. I first added the FOTA library to be able to do a firmware update and after implementing it into my application I realized that I need the bootloader because my building process did not manufacture the app_update.bin output file. 

I will try you suggestion and come back to you with the results.

Best regards,

Andreas