curious about peoples' preferences when it comes to customizing u-boot on a running system -- using a "uEnv.txt" file that can be trivially edited from user space, as opposed to using the u-boot firmware tools to change the actual environment variables in persistent storage.
this is based on something else i will ask about later -- suggestions for target disk layouts that incorporate dual (active and inactive) partitions for robustness and fallback in case of emergency. but for now, let's keep it simple.
obviously, i can certainly combine the two approaches above, but because of the upcoming issue regarding robustness, i'm leaning towards the uEnv.txt approach, and here's why.
if i support updating the env vars in persistent storage, and a system in the field suddenly stops booting properly, then i might be completely in the dark as to what's in the u-boot environment. how do i know what the user has been doing, or what variables he might have changed? however, if i keep all the changes in uEnv.txt, it's easy to get a look at that file and, also, simply removing that file effectively sets the machine back to "factory defaults."
in addition, if i have filesystem corruption that wipes out uEnv.txt (among other things), then, again, i have effectively reduced the system back to factory defaults so it can boot to a known good state of some kind.
i guess i'm more comfortable with the idea of a system having a solid and tested u-boot environment that rarely (if ever) changes, rather than regularly changing things in the persistent storage, but i'm open to being persuaded otherwise; i'm just curious about what others prefer.
rday