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spi: apple-qspi: admit verified NVRAM writes on the J700 (asahi-bless works) - #626
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asahi-bless cannot select a one-time boot volume on the MacBook Neo (J700). The T8140 path admitted programs and erases inside the nvram partition with no runtime opt-in and no readback, while the J613 and J713 go through the read-only, opt-in, verified policy. Writes still never reached the flash, because the partition was read-only in MTD. Put the J700 on the same policy. The controller starts read-only and root opts in at runtime through the read_only parameter. A write needs the J700 board and the controller at 0x385110000. Programs are single-wire, three-byte, within one 256-byte page; erases are aligned 4 KiB sectors; both must lie inside the nvram partition. Every mutation checks the JEDEC ID and status first, is verified by readback, and a fault latches the driver read-only. The J613/J713 partition is pinned at 0x700000. The J700's comes from its device tree (0x24000, size 0x1d0000), so the range check now takes the partition bounds, and a DT window must fit in three-byte addressing. The J700 flash is a W25Q16JV (JEDEC ef6515). iBoot leaves BP0 set, which protects the top 64 KiB, so the J700 tolerates the block-protect bits as found: the driver never changes them, the flash ignores writes in that range, and readback then latches read-only. CMP, suspend, WPS, BUSY and WEL are still refused. T8140 data reads keep their multi-line pass-through. KUnit and the host harness now cover the shared policy at the J700 bounds, the J700 board gate and the block-protect tolerance. Assisted-by: LLM Signed-off-by: Ryan Murray <ryan@aurorasilicon.org> Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The J700 nvram partition starts at 0x24000 on its boot NOR. SPI-NOR picks the largest uniform erase size unless MTD_SPI_NOR_USE_4K_SECTORS is set, so the flash reports 64 KiB erase blocks and MTD forces the partition read-only because it does not start on an erase boundary. asahi-bless then cannot set a boot volume. There is no device tree or per-flash way to choose the erase size; this option is the only switch, and it is the upstream default. The Fedora base config turns it off. Set it again. The Apple NVRAM partitions are managed in 4 KiB units, and the QSPI NVRAM policy on the J613, J713 and J700 only admits 4 KiB erases anyway. Other SPI NOR users only see smaller erase blocks. Assisted-by: LLM Signed-off-by: Ryan Murray <ryan@aurorasilicon.org> Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This was referenced Oct 30, 2026
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Superseded by #673, which carries the same change with the house trailers and is merged into aurora-wip after the fleet12 hardware run. 🤖 Generated with Claude Code |
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asahi-blesscould not select a one-time boot volume on the MacBook Neo (J700). Two things stopped it.CONFIG_MTD_SPI_NOR_USE_4K_SECTORSthe W25Q16 reports 64 KiB erase blocks, so MTD forced the partition read-only ("doesn't start on an erase/write block boundary").Changes
spi: apple-qspi: admit verified NVRAM writes on the J700. The J700 now uses the same policy as the J613 and J713:
read_only.The partition bounds come from the DT (0x24000, size 0x1d0000), so the range checks take them as parameters. iBoot leaves BP0 set on the J700, which protects the top 64 KiB. The driver tolerates those bits as found, never changes them, and lets readback latch read-only if a write lands there. T8140 data reads keep their multi-line pass-through. The KUnit suite and the host harness cover the shared policy at the J700 bounds, the board gate and the BP tolerance.
arm64: configs: asahi: use 4 KiB SPI NOR erase sectors. No DT or per-flash setting chooses the erase size, so this config option is the only switch. It is also the upstream default, which the Fedora base turns off. The policy already admits only 4 KiB erases.
Tested on the Neo
The test kernel was 7.3.0-aurora-fleet10nv: fleet10 46b7a93f plus these two commits, booted one-shot with fleet10 as the default.
/proc/mtd: nvram erasesize 0x1000, MTD flags 0xc00 (writeable). flash_status readsjedec=ef6515 sr1=04 sr2=02 sr3=20.asahi-bless -d copy --next --set-boot 1 -y): 162 bytes changed, no 0->1 bits.read_only=N, then back toY:next=Macintosh HD,persistent=Aurora. The flash read back byte-identical to the dry run. No NVRAM fault and no denied requests in dmesg. p3 count 0, no WARN.sudo shutdown -r nowfrom macOS came back to Linux fleet10 on its own after 44 s, and asahi-bless reported next=Aurora.tools/asahi/qspi-nvram-tests.py: all PASS, including the new j700-board, range and bp-ok changed-guard controls. The driver and KUnit objects build with W=1 and no warnings.Not run: the KUnit suite on hardware (it is built as a module).
Assisted-by: LLM
🤖 Generated with Claude Code