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Building and flashing images on Renesas R-Car S4

To flash AutoSD onto your R-Car S4 board, you must update the R-Car S4 boot firmware, host the {productshortname} image on a TFTP server on your workstation, and configure your R-Car S4 to communicate with the TFTP server.

Prerequisites

  • Access to the Renesas R-Car S4 support page
  • A workstation PC configured with a TFTP server
  • A network connection between the PC and the R-Car S4 board

Installing the Boot Firmware

To install the boot firmware for the R-Car S4, download the startup guide, Tera Term macros, and boot firmware files from the R-Car S4 support page. These files are in the Software Downloads section and require login credentials from Renesas.

  • Download the Startup Guide zip file, R-Car_S4_SDK_start_up_guide_content_v3.16.2.zip.
  • Extract the R-CarS4_SDK_StartupGuide_3.16.2.zip file from the archive.
  • This archive contains the R-CarS4_SDK_StartupGuide.pdf guide and the teratermmacro folder.
  • Download the firmware files from R-Car S4 SDK Linux PKG with GCC compiler v3.16.2.
  • Download xOS3_SDK1_Linux_ReferenceSDK1_v3.16.2_release.zip
  • Unpack the archive, then unpack the included rcar-xos_sdk1-gateway_v3.16.2_release.tar.gz file
  • The boot firmware is in rcar-xos/v3.16.2/os/bootloader/s4

To install the firmware, follow the instructions in section 18 of the R-CarS4_SDK_StartupGuide.pdf, “How to flash images.”

Installing the AutoSD Image

To flash AutoSD onto your R-Car S4 board, you must host the AutoSD image on a TFTP server on your workstation machine and configure your R-Car S4 to communicate with the TFTP server.

Prerequisites

  • Boot firmware is installed and working
  • A workstation PC configured with a TFTP server
  • A network connection between the PC and the R-Car S4 board

Configuring Networking in U-Boot

Configure networking on your R-Car S4 so that the board can communicate with the TFTP server that hosts your AutoSD image.

Procedure

  1. Connect port 1 of the 3 ports on the Ethernet sub-board.

Note

Identify port 1 from the PCB label (silkscreen) next to the connector. The 3 connectors are labeled CN101, CN201, CN301. Port 1 is CN101. You can also observe the physical layout of the board. Port 1 is farther apart from the other 2 ports, and to the right when you face the RJ45 connector side of the board.

  1. Set the necessary networking environment variables:

    setenv ethaddr __<xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx>__
setenv ipaddr 192.168.0.20
setenv netmask 255.255.255.0
setenv serverip 192.168.0.1
saveenv

    Where the values match the values for your network setup:

    • ethaddr specifies the MAC address from the sticker attached to the Ethernet connector
    • ipaddr specifies the IP address of the S4 board
    • netmask specifies the standard netmask
    • serverip specifies the IP address of the PC hosting the TFTP server

Building the Image

The process to build AutoSD images involves the automotive-image-builder tool, which is available in the automotive-image-builder repository. This repository contains a configuration file for the Renesas R-Car S4 automotive-image-builder/targets/rcar_s4.ipp.yml that you can use to build images for your R-Car S4 board.

Prerequisites

  • A Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL system running on AArch64 architecture
  • git
  • gzip
  • A workstation PC configured with a TFTP server

Procedure

  1. Clone the automotive-image-builder repository:

    git clone https://gitlab.com/CentOS/automotive/src/automotive-image-builder.git

  2. Build the R-Car S4 AutoSD image:

    cd automotive-image-builder
./automotive-image-builder --container build --target rcar_s4 --mode package --export image <manifest> .

    Replace <manifest> with your custom OSBuild manifest file, in the .mpp.yml format. If you do not have your own manifest file, you can build an AutoSD image with the automotive-image-builder/example.mpp.yml manifest file.

  3. Compress the image:

    gzip cs9-rcar_s4-developer-regular.aarch64.img cs9-rcar_s4-developer-regular.aarch64.img.gz

  4. Place this image into your TFTP server.

Flashing the Image

To flash the AutoSD image onto your R-Car S4, you must copy the image from your TFTP server onto your board.

Prerequisites

  • A workstation PC configured with a TFTP server that hosts your AutoSD image
  • A network connection between the PC and the R-Car S4 board

Procedure

  1. Download the image file to 0x480000000:

    tftp 0x480000000 cs9-rcar_s4-developer-regular.aarch64.img.gz

  2. Copy the image to the MMC device 0:

    gzwrite mmc 0 0x480000000 ${filesize} 1000000 0

Configuring U-Boot to Boot the Image

To boot the AutoSD image, you must configure U-Boot on the R-Car S4 to boot from the image.

Prerequisites

  • The image is copied to MMC device 0.

Procedure

  1. Create an environment variable called grub that loads and starts EFI from partition 1 of the MMC device:

    setenv grub 'fatload mmc 0:1 0x70000000 /EFI/BOOT/BOOTAA64.EFI && bootefi 0x70000000'
setenv bootargs
setenv bootcmd 'run grub'
saveenv

    At this point, the board is configured to boot straight into AutoSD after reset.

  2. To boot into AutoSD immediately, reset the board using the reset command.

  3. To start the boot process manually, use the run grub command.

Additional Resources

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