u-boot fails to cross compile

[Patagonicus]

I'm trying to build the SD card image, but g6wawlwkifjmg1hjmnpwjfplf5rm45dz-uboot-aarch64-none-elf.drv fails to build because it's trying to run an aarch64 binary on the amd64 host:

…
  COPY    u-boot.dtb
/nix/store/v1im623fdbjpn1fz1if1x6radm5h4jhg-aarch64-none-elf-binutils-2.35.1/bin/aarch64-none-elf-ld.bfd: warning: -z relro ignored
/nix/store/v1im623fdbjpn1fz1if1x6radm5h4jhg-aarch64-none-elf-binutils-2.35.1/bin/aarch64-none-elf-ld.bfd: warning: -z relro ignored
/nix/store/v1im623fdbjpn1fz1if1x6radm5h4jhg-aarch64-none-elf-binutils-2.35.1/bin/aarch64-none-elf-ld.bfd: warning: -z relro ignored
  LDS     u-boot-elf.lds
  LD      u-boot.elf
/nix/store/v1im623fdbjpn1fz1if1x6radm5h4jhg-aarch64-none-elf-binutils-2.35.1/bin/aarch64-none-elf-ld.bfd: warning: -z relro ignored
  CFGCHK  u-boot.cfg
installing
40+0 records in
40+0 records out
40 bytes copied, 4.9299e-05 s, 811 kB/s
3887+0 records in
3887+0 records out
3887 bytes (3.9 kB, 3.8 KiB) copied, 0.00318808 s, 1.2 MB/s
4864+0 records in
4864+0 records out
4864 bytes (4.9 kB, 4.8 KiB) copied, 0.00394049 s, 1.2 MB/s
2288+0 records in
2288+0 records out
2288 bytes (2.3 kB, 2.2 KiB) copied, 0.0018939 s, 1.2 MB/s
/nix/store/8ssvpvkpqyihxy420fr9imi35b5pq75v-stdenv-linux/setup: line 1333: /nix/store/jy2izih57pp76ljdg05zf73sbzilzhzk-meson64-tools-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/bl30sig: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

See also the full nix-build output.

file says:

/nix/store/jy2izih57pp76ljdg05zf73sbzilzhzk-meson64-tools-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/bl30sig: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /nix/store/0s43vz64zh1iibpxn0s4wb8j6snz6bjc-glibc-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu-2.32-48/lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, not stripped

Some more information:

• The repo is at 5ab0230, no local modifications.
• I'm running nix-build --keep-going.
• The host system is NixOS 21.05 at 8b0b81dab17753ab344a44c04be90a61dc55badf. I have flakes enabled and I'm unsure if this affects things (I assume this is why older commits fail trying to use builtins.fetchGit, but to my understanding it shouldn't interfere with master, especially not with the error above). I'll probably set up a vanilla NixOS in a VM to try building the system there.

nix-info -m:

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 5.10.62, NixOS, 21.05.20210910.8b0b81d (Okapi)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.4pre20210802_47e96bb
• channels(root): "nixos-21.05.3021.8b0b81dab17"
• channels(philipp): ""
• nixpkgs: /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos

Any ideas what is going wrong or how to get the image to properly build? I also have trouble building it natively, but I'll open a separate issue since it's a different failure (and it's currently still building and I'm waiting for the full log output).

[Patagonicus]

Ok, I've been staring at the files a bit and with this patch it at least finishes building:

diff --git a/overlays/uboot/overlay.nix b/overlays/uboot/overlay.nix
index d918aee..8cdcd29 100644
--- a/overlays/uboot/overlay.nix
+++ b/overlays/uboot/overlay.nix
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ let
   with-crypto = import final.path {
     crossSystem = platform;
   };
-  meson64-tools = with-crypto.callPackage ./meson64-tools.nix { };
+  meson64-tools = with-crypto.buildPackages.callPackage ./meson64-tools.nix { };
   blx_fix = arm64.buildPackages.callPackage ./blx_fix.nix { };
   uboot = arm64.callPackage ./u-boot.nix {
     inherit uboot-hardkernel meson64-tools blx_fix;

I haven't tried booting the system yet, I'm waiting for the native build to finish/fail and then I need to reinstall petitboot first.

[Patagonicus]

Good news: it boots! And SATA seems to work, which was the main thing I was looking for.

Bad news: No login prompt over UART plus quite a few error message / stack traces in dmesg. Both of these aren't super bad, though.

Still don't quite understand how the image was supposed to build without the patch I've posted above. Maybe it is a flake vs non-flake thing? Haven't gotten around to trying on a non-flake system.

I think my next step will be working on adding flake support so it'll be easier for me to import the kernel and u-boot modules into my config so I can use those with all of my existing config modules.

[considerate]

Thank you very much for this work! I didn’t notice this myself since I have enabled qemu virtualization for aarch64 on my own machine but it definitely one of the main goals to be able to build the sd image on a plain x86_64 system.

I’ll test this out and merge that patch if I can figure out how to fix the boot issue you mentioned above.

[considerate]

There is a possibility that we have to revert to signing the bootloader with the proprietary tool from amlogic instead of meson-tools64. I was having some weird boot problems on the mainline-kernel branch as well and it might be down to the same cause.

[considerate]

@Patagonicus On the most recent version of master 0c1716b I didn't make any effort to support cross compilation. I just enabled aarch64 emulation on the host machine and built that way.

If you're still interested in getting cross compilation working I'd welcome any effort in that directions.

[asheshambasta]

My apologies for bumping an old issue.

1. I built the image using the readme and ran sd_fusing as instructed. Not being familiar with emulation, I did get stumped on having to enable it first;
2. my odroid hc4 fails to boot with this: the boot process fails to proceed post the Starting kernel ... message, which possibly means it crashes. The system becomes unresponsive (attached USB keyboard stops working etc.)

There are no error messages in the initial output.

My nix-info:

 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.0.11, NixOS, 22.11 (Raccoon), 22.11.598.2d10e73416e`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.11.0`
 - channels(root): `"nixos-22.11, oldpkgs-19.03"`
 - channels(ashesh): `"nixos-20.09.3975.17b101e29df"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos`

Any pointers on how to proceed?

Edit 1:

I've tried to build just using the repository; nix-build . and then copied the resulting image to the SD. And that leads to an unbootable image (solid blue light on boot with boot switch pressed).