Revision as of 07:38, 25 October 2017

Overall

This guide provides information which will help you choose a firmware upgrade way on rockchip platform.

MASKROM

MASKROM is the simplest way. 

Belows are the advantages and disadvantages of using maskrom.

Advantages:

• Avoid brick
• Simple, unified

Disadvantages:

• Need a maskrom key

Support update from

• USB OTG

U-boot

Rockchip mainline u-boot have support various upgrade ways, such as rockusb/fastboot/ums, each of them could be used.

It could be entered by issuing "reboot ums/fastboot/rockusb" from linux, or add the board-spefic key detection code.

It's also possible to do network/usb-disk upgrade in u-boot, though you must be familiar with u-boot to use them.

Belows are the advantages and disadvantages of using maskrom.

Advantages:

• Common

Disadvantages:

• Must be familiar with u-boot

Support update from

• USB OTG
• USB DISK
• Network

Linux

Both yocto and debian use deb as the package manager, so firmware upgrade could be done by deb installation.

(SDK build scripts can pack kernel/u-boot in deb）

Advantages:

• standard
• friendly to the users

Disadvantages:

•  could be brick

SD-Card Recovery

By changing boot order in u-boot, it's possible to let u-boot load kernel and rootfs from sd-card at first.

We could use it to create a sd-card recovery image.

When the board boot into sd-card, the init scripts in SD-Card can install kernel/u-boot deb  which will burn firmware to eMMC.

A sd-card recovery image could created by meta-rockchip-initramfs.

Advantages:

• Convenient
• Easy to customize, like a normal linux

Disadvantages:

• Slow

Initramfs/Recovery

Advantages:

• Easy to customize, like a normal linux
• Powerful

Disadvantages:

• Slow