DTB generator: the missing tool

ARM General ARM Discussion
1

Hi everybody.

I’m trying to install the Manjaro ARM on a GT King and my problem is about the correct dtb file. Wifi doesn’t work.

Thinking generally, if there was a tool that probes the hardware an generate dtb file correctly, many hours of testing would be saved.

There are two possibilities: First, many of these sbc boards come with Android that uses all hardware completely. One Android App could generate the dtb for that hardware.

The second possible solution is a JEOS distribution, with only objective to boot in a specific hardware and create corresponding dtb.

2

That would be a really sweet tool and make most upstreaming work redundant.

But alas, I don’t think such a tool exists or is feasible to create.

I mean, it’s kind of what ACPI does for x86, right?

3

In my case, I could extract the dtb from Android image that everything works. Was a surprise to me that this dtb file does not work with Manjaro 5.15 kernel.

So, the possible solutions can be:

  • A conversion between Android version x dtb to Linux version y dtb
  • A abstraction layer in kernel that make dtb of old kernel version work in new kernel.
  • A Linux kernel that could test possible solutions, and, may be, interactively, find the right parameters that substitute the old dtb.