Toradex Easy Installer Raw Partition

Technical Support
,
1

On verdin eval board, I tried to modify an existing image.json (which is working) and replace an EXT4 partition with a raw partition. Everything else inside image.json is untouched.

...
{
	"partition_size_nominal": 1024,
	"want_maximised": false,
	"content": {
		"label": "Boot-A",
		"filesystem_type": "ext4",
		"filename": "rootfs.tar.xz",
		"uncompressed_size": 456.7
	}
},
...

...
{
	"partition_size_nominal": 1024,
	"want_maximised": false,
	"content": {
		"filesystem_type": "raw",
		"rawfiles": [
			{
				"filename": "rootfs.raw",
				"dd_options": "seek=0"
			}
		]
	}
},
...

This leads to an error, for exactly this partition,

Timeout waiting for partition device /dev/mmcblk2p3.

The image has not be written completely …

Do I misunderstand part of the documentation? Because for me it looks like according to the docs, that a “Block Device” can contain several “Partition”, which contains a “Content”, which can include “Raw Files”.

The reason why I like to do this because one partition is a checked/verified by dm-verity and therefore I copy a raw disk image, while all other partitions are regular ext4 partitions.

2

I found a workaround for my problem. I partition everything via prepare.sh. I don’t use the partitions section of the image.json anymore, while the blockdevs sections still work. This works better than expected and also would one allow to use the extended partition while still using the dos scheme. I just added the following to prepare.sh:

sfdisk /dev/mmcblk2 << PARTITIONS
label: dos
unit: sectors

/dev/mmcblk2p1 : start=        2048, size=      204800, type=83, bootable
/dev/mmcblk2p2 : start=      206848, size=    10485760, type=83
/dev/mmcblk2p3 : start=    10692608, size=      454656, type=83
/dev/mmcblk2p4 : start=    11147264, size=    20971520, type=5
/dev/mmcblk2p5 : start=    11149312, size=      227328, type=83
/dev/mmcblk2p6 : start=    11378688, size=      454656, type=83

PARTITIONS
3

Hello @thomasstauffer,

Thanks for reporting this.
Could you please send me your image.json file with the modification that you made so that I could try to reproduce the error?
Also, which version of the module, carrier board, and type of image are you using?

Thanks for sharing your workaround in the meantime. And glad to hear that it works for you.

4

Attached two image-default.json which is working (using ext4) and image-raw.json which is failing with the previously mentioned error (using raw).

Model: Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus Quad 4GB IT V1.1A, Serial# 15034114
Carrier: Toradex Verdin Development Board V1.1C, Serial# 10952591

image-default.json (2.4 KB)
image-raw.json (2.4 KB)

The image is created via Yocto (only a few added packages). The rootfs/bootfs are both working fine. Also when I use the hack mentioned above the rootfs/bootfs are working fine.

6

Hi @thomasstauffer,

I’m glad to hear that you were able to solve this by adding the partition scheme in prepare.sh. It is definitely a recommended approach to add any modifications in the pre-installation stage. But I was still wondering about the cause of the error you saw with your original approach of modifying the image.json file. So I tried to reproduce the issue by adding the partition into the image.json file on a reference multimedia image just like you did. However, I never ran across this error and the installation just finished successfully for me. So I have a few questions for you:

  1. Which version of Toradex Easy Installer did you use?
  2. When did you see this error message (in the boot log after installation or during the installation phase)?
7

I used the Toradex Easy Installer which is preconfigured on the boards we get from Toradex or Verdin-iMX8MP_ToradexEasyInstaller_5.7.0-devel-20220710+build.406. The error happens very early in the process, before the Toradex Easy Installer begins to copy an image (the first images are quite large, so it would be noticable). I tried several modification (more/less partitions, …), but I always ended up with the same (just different device name) error. I added a picture:

error-partitioning
error-partitioning1275Ă—713 198 KB

But let me check then again with the most up to date Toradex Easy Installer.

8

I tried again with Toradex Easy Installer 5.7.3. When there is no table_type, it seems to work (to mix raw and non raw partitions), when I add "table_type": "gpt" to the blockdev section, the error pops up.

image.json (2.5 KB)

Just for information: We very likely need more than 4 partitions because of using secure boot together with an A/B update strategy (means 2 x bootfs, 2 x rootfs, very likely 2 x var fs, 1 x shared data partition).

Workaround from up there still works and at least for us is good enough.

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