Re: Autoboot when idling at prompt possible?

[Ahmad Fatoum <a.fatoum@pengutronix.de>]

Hello Konstantin,

On 16.03.23 13:34, Konstantin Kletschke wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> in order to get the booting more robust I already changed
> autoboot_abort_key from "any" to "ctrl-c".
> 
> We wan't to keep the autoboot_timeout to be able to access the
> bootloader prompt manually or with install tools more reliably to a non
> zero positive value. I.e. enter prompt with timeout greater than zero
> still should be possible.

If you keep ctrl+c pressed during boot, you may abort before init runs,
even if global.autboot_timeout=0.

> Is there a mechanism already implemented or thinkable to be added as a
> command, which boots when the prompt is idling for a couple of minutes?
> Lets say the bootloader caught ctrl-c by accident (free serial pins in
> headless encasing in rough EMV environment) and idles there
> for years...

You can enable watchdog before init runs, e.g. in your board code, let's
say with a timeout of 2 minutes. If you have reason to use the shell, you
run wd -x manually or set global.autoboot=abort and reset.

You may need to enable watchdog poller support if you have a watchdog timer
that can't be disabled and you want for barebox to periodically poll it
instead.

This is readily possible. You can still set a shorter boot watchdog timeout
with global.boot.watchdog_timeout. Other possibilities:

 - Allow entering bootloader shell only after systemctl reboot loader
   (See barebox reboot mode documentation)

 - Add option to have barebox password login at most increase countdown,
   but not abort it. Users must then enter full password within specified
   time or system autoboots

Cheers,
Ahmad

> 
> Kind Regards
> Konstantin
> 
> 

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