the second-last 64k seems to be the default firmware board configuration
area.
Since I have no idea whether uboot uses it or not - and it's prefixed
with an atheros eeprom signature (0xaa55), I figure the safest thing
to do is mark it as read-only.
I've modified my local tplink firmware building program to generate
a board configuration section - which is separate to this partition.
It's located in the 64k _before_ this particular 64k.
The firmware build program from OpenWRT never initialises those
values and the firmware images from tplink also leave it 0x0, so I
don't currently know what the exact, correct details should be.
the ar71xx platform code should assume a uboot or redboot environment.
The current code gets very confused (and just crashes) on a uboot
environment, where each attribute=value pair is in a single entry.
Redboot on the other hand stores it as "attribute", "value", "attribute",
"value", ...
This allows the kernel to boot on a TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND from flash,
where the uboot environment gets setup. This didn't show up during a netboot
as "tftpboot" and "go" don't setup the uboot environment variables.
The default flash layout gives only 1 megabyte for the kernel, gzipped.
The uboot firmware running on this device only supports gzip, not lzma, so
we actually _do_ have to try and slim the kernel down a bit.
But, since I can't actually do that at the present, I'm opting to:
* extend the kernel from 1mb to 2mb;
* have rootfs fill the rest of that, save 64k;
* eventually I'll hide a 64k config partition at the end, between the
end of rootfs and the ART (radio configuration data.)
The uboot firmware doesn't care about the partition layout. It just
expects the kernel application image to sit at 0xbf020000 (right after
the 128k uboot image.) The uboot header isn't actually read either -
it's "faked" from a "tplink" flash image header. So as long as the
map configuration here matches what is being written out via the
tplink firmware generator, everything is a-ok.
A previous commit disabled compiling the AR9130 support in the default
HAL build in the kernel. Since the AR9130 support won't actually function
without AH_SUPPORT_AR9130 (and that abomination needs to be undone at some
point, in order to allow USB 11n NICs to also work), we now have to
explicitly compile it in.
But since the 11n RF backends don't (currently) join the RF linker set,
one has to compile in _an_ RF backend for the HAL to compile.
At some point it would be nice to correctly update the bus glue to make
this "correct", including having the DDR flush occur in the right spot
(ie, any AHB interrupt.)
put into suspend/shutdown. Old PCI controllers performed that
operation in firmware but for RTL8111C or newer controllers, it's
responsibility of driver. It's not clear whether the firmware of
RTL8111B still downgrades its speed to 10/100Mbps so leave it as it
was.
issues probably needing workarounds in bge(4) when brgphy(4) handles this
PHY. Letting ukphy(4) handle it instead results in a working configuration,
although likely with performance penalties.
The calibrate callout is done with the sc lock held.
This only showed up when using an older NIC (AR5212) whose
radio/phy requires the rfgain adjustment.
Pointy-hat-to: adrian
Sponsored by: Hobnob, Inc.
