How to erase eMMC automatically during flashing image using Toradex Easy Installer?

Technical Support
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1

Hi all,
I have a Apalis iMX6Q 1GB and Ixora base board. And I want to use Toradex Easy Installer to automatically install the custom Linux image I created.
I have managed to make my own Linux image and it is OK to burn in the iMX6 and boot.
And I also need to clear and restore the default boot cmdline of my own u-boot, I know it can be done manually by clicking the erase button in the GUI of Toradex Easy Installer. But how to do it automatically in image.json file? (We need to download the image by autoinstall=true in image.json)
Thanks!
Charles

2

You can flash empty file to u-boot environment storage place by add ‘empty_uboot_env’ to image.json.

 {
            "content": {
                "filesystem_type": "raw",
                "rawfiles": [
                    {
                        "dd_options": "seek=2",
                        "filename": "SPL"
                    },
                    {
                        "dd_options": "seek=138",
                        "filename": "u-boot.imx"
                    },
                    {
                        "filename": "empty_uboot_env",
                        "dd_options": "seek=4079"
                    }
                ]
            },
            "name": "mmcblk0boot0"
}

use dd if=/dev/zero of=empty_uboot_env count=16 to generate empty file. Then u-boot will adopt the default environment setting compiled from u-boot source code where you can add what you want.

3

Please note that due to the U-Boot environment not being at a fixed offset just using a fixed seek=4079 as @benjamin.tx suggested is not really too good of an idea!

Starting with the Toradex Easy Installer 1.1 you may however make use of the erase property as explained here.

4

Thanks, Marcel. You are right one is better to use latest Toradex Easy Installer’s Erase feature instead of directly over-writing U-Boot environment area on eMMC. It was just a workaround when v1.1 Tezi was not released then.