Dear Igor,
In message 5110EF4F.3080308@compulab.co.il you wrote:
Why should we? Who tells that this is not perfectly legal on the running system?
It might be perfectly legal, but we also consider a tons of work explaining why and how this should be done (needless to mention the amount of bricked boards).
Please understand that I will not really buy this "bricked bord" argument. This is an issue where system builders and users are involved. Apparently the system builders agree that performance is so important that they compile with optimizer options that do not tolerate unaligned accesses, thus introducing the problem. This is OK for systems where only educated users have access. If you open the U-Boot console interface to uneducated users, you are always running some risk that a stupid command will brick the board or at least make it no longer usable to that user. And as a user you should well be aware that bad things can happen, and that it is an excellent idea to actually test any new settings or operations before installing these. If users ignore even such basic rules, then the situation is f*cked up and cannot be helped - if it's not the spalsh screen, then these users will find other ways to run into trouble.
Let me repeat it: U-Boot is a boot loader. It is not intended for meddling by avarage Johnny Loser, but for system programmers who know what they are doing. And anyone doing such things is well adviced to _test_ his settings on the command line before storing these for automatic use. As I mentioned before, omitting such tests is a sin that carries with it its own punishment.
What are you trying to say? Is it that the environment variables change and in particular the splash screen installation _must_ be done by a programmer?
I tried to be clear: people who work on such a level are supposed to know what they are doing.
I find it interesting that a lot of arguments get raised here how important this issue is (is it? who has actually bricked a system this way?), and how that is a special case (here I disagree), but so far you all appear to ignore my argument of testing settings before putting these to use.
I see little excuse for neglecting such really basic diligence.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk