mkimage -p only places the FIRST payload. The rest are packed contiguously, and
U-Boot reads each by dividing its data-position by the 512-byte block size with a
truncating divide -- so a payload that is not block-aligned is read from the
wrong offset. Measured: without -B this script emitted the kernel at 0x9A94,
data-position % 512 = 148, which is exactly the failing shape.
That failure is on record. flare-edge 9387cff (2026-09-01) hit it on a boot_b
FIT: "unaligned sub-images fail the RESC loader's sha256 and the logo silently
falls back to 'No resource file'". It landed on -B 0x200, inferred from noticing
the proven image was "512-aligned" without checking for a larger factor.
The proven images are aligned to 0x800, not merely to 512. Measured on the pair
that boots this board today: boot.img fdt/kernel/resource at 0x800 / 0x12800 /
0x3A7800, recovery.img at 0x800 / 0x12800 / 0x3F8800 -- every one a multiple of
2048. So 0x800 satisfies everything 0x200 does, since every 0x800 multiple is a
0x200 multiple, and additionally reproduces the vendor layout exactly. The cost
is at most 2 KiB of padding. Where a remembered rule and a booting image
disagree, match the image.
The alignment is now also asserted at build time rather than trusted. It runs on
every build because the failure it catches is silent -- a wrong offset does not
fail the build, it fails on a panel, and only sometimes visibly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
The firmware builds against sysdrv/source/buildroot/buildroot-2025.02.8 in the
vendor SDK. That tree is not in the vendor checkout -- the SDK ships 2023.02.6 --
it was not in this manifest, and nothing anywhere recorded its origin. A clean
rebuild on another machine silently fell back to the vendor's older buildroot
and produced a different userspace, which is flare-edge#135.
fetch-buildroot-tarball.sh follows fetch-kernel-tarball.sh exactly: pinned URL,
pinned sha256, fails closed on a missing pin. Buildroot signs releases with GPG
rather than publishing a .sha256, so the pin was computed from the tarball and
is what the script verifies against.
The manifest now says out loud that two of the inputs are tarballs rather than
git trees, so "which buildroot" has an answer in the same place as "which LVGL".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
The VM builds warden_defconfig plus virt.fragment, so it has CONFIG_BRIDGE; the
vendor 5.10 kernel most panels still run does not. A Client-mode access point is
bridged to the wired uplink and needs that, so the Wi-Fi page offers it here and
declines on a 5.10 panel.
Both answers are correct for the kernel underneath, which is exactly why it is
worth writing down: a screenshot from the VM is not evidence about that page on
a 5.10 panel until the fleet has moved to the 6.18 build.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
The vendor 5.10 kernel is built without CONFIG_BRIDGE, and that absence has
shaped the firmware: the panel's access point has to be its own subnet with its
own DHCP pool instead of joining the LAN, and warden_router_set_zone() treats a
second LAN port as impossible. Both carry a code comment saying "this kernel has
no bridge".
Turning it on is what lets a Client-mode panel run an access point the way an
ordinary ceiling AP does -- wlan0 and the wired uplink in one broadcast domain,
addresses handed out by whatever router is already upstream.
Verified on the bench panel: before, `ip link add type bridge` returned
"Operation not supported"; on this kernel the bridge is created and eth0
enslaves into it (/sys/class/net/br0/brif/eth0). WireGuard, iptables and VLAN
still work.
Also fixes a warden-modbus path in architecture.md left stale by the apps/ move.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
The series was built, packaged with mk-bootimg.sh, and booted on the bench
panel: display, backlight, Goodix touch, RGA, eth0 and the usb0 gadget all
work, with no kernel faults. M4/M5/M6 in this file are stale.
The same test is what proved the three missing subsystems were real rather than
a reading of the config: wireguard, iptables and VLAN each failed on the panel
before the defconfig fix and each works after it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
LVGL and the vendor RV1106 SDK are what this platform is built against, and
nothing in this repo said WHICH ones. The two live outside every worktree as
shared checkouts, so "the version we build against" was whatever happened to be
on the machine.
They are pinned here now, by exact commit, with one script that obtains and
verifies them. Not copied: between them they are ~21 GB, the vendor SDK bakes
absolute paths into its host tools so it has to sit at one stable path anyway,
and a 21 GB git repo would be unusable while still not making anything
reproducible. What makes a build reproducible is knowing exactly which tree was
used, which is a commit id -- the same reasoning build/fetch-kernel-tarball.sh
already applies to the kernel, where a sha256 pin stands in for vendoring the
tarball.
Two behaviours worth stating, because both were wrong in the first draft:
- A checkout is detected by `.git` EXISTING, not by it being a directory. LVGL
is checked out as a worktree here, where `.git` is a file.
- Local modifications are reported and are NOT a failure. The vendor SDK is
supposed to carry them -- tools/build-firmware.sh applies our sdk-patches
series into that tree on every build -- so a pristine checkout is the
unusual state. Only a MISSING or DRIFTED tree fails.
Nothing is ever reset automatically: a tree off its pin is reported, because a
local change to a vendor tree is usually someone mid-debug, not something to
throw away on their behalf.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
Two gaps between "this SDK builds a kernel" and "this SDK can replace the
vendor SDK for the device".
BOOT IMAGE. build-kernel.sh emitted a zImage and a dtb and stopped, so
producing something the board's U-Boot would actually boot still meant going
through the vendor tree. mk-bootimg.sh packages the pair the way M2 bring-up
established (kernel/docs/m2-boot-on-c8a3.md): an EXTERNAL-DATA FIT
(mkimage -E -p 0x800), a mandatory `resource` multi sub-image carrying
rk-kernel.dtb plus any logos, and the sysmem sentinel load addresses. Each of
those was learned from a specific failure -- an embedded-data FIT is "No fit
blob", a missing resource image is "Failed to load DTB, ret=-19", real load
addresses collide -- so the script also ASSERTS the metadata stayed small,
because an embedded-data FIT looks perfectly fine until a panel will not come
back.
NETWORKING. Diffing this defconfig's expansion against the kernel actually
shipping on the panel found three whole subsystems missing, none of which fail
at build time and none of which are visible until the unit is in the field:
- WIREGUARD + NET_UDP_TUNNEL: flared's mesh to FLARE. Without it wg0 never
comes up.
- VLAN_8021Q: the MikroTik app configures tagged ports the panel terminates.
- NETFILTER and legacy iptables: every rule in S35iptables, and NAT for
router mode.
The netfilter half carried a trap worth naming. 6.18 split the legacy tables
out behind NETFILTER_XTABLES_LEGACY and IP_NF_IPTABLES_LEGACY, symbols that do
not exist in 5.10 -- so copying the vendor kernel's symbol list verbatim gives
a kernel where IP_NF_FILTER and IP_NF_NAT silently stay off and `iptables` has
no filter or nat table at all. Our userspace drives legacy iptables, not nft.
The result now shows ZERO regressions against the shipping 5.10 kernel across
mesh, gadget, firewall, VLAN, storage, net core, display/input, RGA/NPU,
wifi/BT and watchdog.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
A scenario driving the VM from outside can only see the console, and the UI's
own log was going to a file inside the guest -- reachable only after the
process exited. That made a whole class of question unanswerable while the UI
was still running: what the UI thought it was doing at the moment a screenshot
looked wrong.
It paid for itself immediately: a dashboard fullscreen that kept reverting was
a full UI rebuild firing 553 ms after the tap, which the console showed
outright (flare-edge: the applier's first-tick rebuild).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
ui-shot.sh proves touch reaches the UI in one tap. Verifying a UI change needs
a SEQUENCE -- swipe through the app rows, open a submenu, tap a tab, bring up
the keyboard -- and booting per step costs about a minute under TCG, so:
- qmp.py gains a `drive` mode: one connection, one boot, a script of
tap/swipe/fling/shot/sleep steps in PANEL PIXELS rather than the raw
0..32767 tablet axis. Swipes interpolate their motion, because LVGL decides
a gesture from the movement between indev polls and a press-then-release
with nothing in between is a click, not a scroll.
- ui-drive.sh runs such a script against a booted VM and collects the
screenshots.
It also FAILS on a UI that died mid-script. warden-ui crashing leaves its last
frame in the framebuffer, so screendumps keep returning a plausible picture of
a program that no longer exists; stage-2 init now announces the exit and its
status on the console, and ui-drive.sh greps for that after the run. This is
what caught the SIGSEGV behind flare-edge#125.
Stage-2 init also mounts devpts. The UI's Terminal page opens a PTY, so
without it that page could only ever report "no PTY available" -- it rendered,
which made a screenshot scenario look fine while the one thing the page does
was untestable.
tests/scripts/nav-stress.txt is the first committed drive script: the
navigation sequence that reproduces flare-edge#125.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T2D2KtdgwbhbF6Mo64eUrn
