On 7/6/26 2:36 PM, Yannic Moog wrote:
Hello Yannic,
When you include optee-os in the U-Boot fitImage, what do you do with
that optee-os which U-Boot does not support ? Details please ?
Sure, sorry. OS can/will use it. There is no requirement, that I know, of any
bootloader
interfacing with OP-TEE for proper functionality and its purpose is to work
with Linux kernel.
At minimum, if CONFIG_OPTEE is not enabled, U-Boot won't execute
optee_copy_fdt_nodes() and won't transfer any optee-os firmware and
reserved-memory DT nodes to the Linux DT when starting the kernel, so
Linux DT will be buggy and Linux may possibly misbehave.
Got it. I tested your theory and with all TEE configs off and OP-TEE packaged,
kernel device tree
still has the necessary device tree nodes. Is there something I missed (am
using phycore-imx8mp
board) ? How does your Linux dtb look like in that scenario?
I cannot answer this question, the test you performed is not well
documented -- kernel version is unknown, whether the kernel was in any
way modified is also unknown, etc. Maybe your kernel tree already
contains some optee-os node ?
I guess the only job bootloader needs to do is load it into memory. I don't
know details about
specific uses within the security context and if there are any that require
bootloader support.
If in your use case, U-Boot is supposed to only load optee-os into
memory , why not load it from U-Boot command line or as part of fitImage
when booting Linux kernel ?
I figured via the u-boot.dtsi is the easiest solution.
It seems in your use case, optee-os does not have to be part of the
bootloader image at all ?
I believe it does. The init phase looks the following (on imx8m)
ROM -> U-Boot SPL -> tf-a -> OP-TEE -> tf-a -> U-boot proper
and something has to load OP-TEE into main memory when tf-a is done with init
and jumps to the
OPTEE load addr. That's what U-Boot does.
In that case, U-Boot should be aware of that optee-os , i.e. enable
CONFIG_OPTEE .
[...]
Also, keeping optional when using if defs is not a good idea. Binman will still
build you
an
image
when no OP-TEE blob is present, but should not since you enabled OPTEE configs.
If you
enable
OPTEE, you should have an OP-TEE blob packaged.
We could add ifndef OPTEE around the optional property.
The optional keyword is actually kept in this case, it is not a full revert.
You did however miss one vital point -- the tee node is part of the
U-boot fitImage, even if the tee.bin binary is not present and OPTEE
support in U-Boot is disabled. Binman prints a confusing message, and
generates a bogus empty tee {} node in the fitImage. That is incorrect.
Yes, forgot to address that. I don't think it is confusing, at least content
wise. Visually, I
can
see how that is confusing. I want to neither agree nor disagree on the
correctness part because
I
don't really know the fitImage spec. Having the tee node be part of the
fitImage is a design
choice, all optional blobs behave that way from my understanding.
It is a broken node introduced by commit b57ed147939c ("dts:
imx8m{m,n,p,q}: Make optee packaging optional") , it is not supposed to
be part of the fitImage unless optee-os is bundled into the fitImage.
This I still do not understand how you come to the conclusion that it (tee
node) is not supposed to
be part of the fitImage. Can you point me to the doc that disallows this?
The empty tee node is dead code, that is why it should not be in the
fitImage. Before b57ed147939c ("dts: imx8m{m,n,p,q}: Make optee
packaging optional") that tee node was correctly not part of the
fitImage unless explicitly configured in by the user (CONFIG_OPTEE=y).
I guess it means that there is a bug in binman if you say having empty tee node
is incorrect.
And so it should be fixed in binman itself imo, not here for imx8.
No, this is not a bug in binman, please see above.
Also, assuming that it is indeed illegal: Binman looks at an external blob and
does not remove the
parent node when it is the only child and found to be missing.
Can you please clarify what should happen when no tee blob could be found and
packaged?
In case of CONFIG_OPTEE=y and "optional" keyword and missing tee.bin
blob , I think the node should be retained, because the user might
inject tee.bin into the u-boot.itb after the build with some "mkimage -F
..." invocation.
In case of CONFIG_OPTEE=n , there should be no tee node.
I am asking because you wanted to keep the optional property which will cause
us to end up in the
same situation you said is illegal: Having the tee node in the fitImage but no
tee blob.
Please see above.
