Dear Tolunay,
in message 433C658F.8010209@orkun.us you wrote:
OK. Probably an on/off knob for user is enough. I think board designer needs a bit more help in setting a policy for his/her board.
Just make sure you don't get into the way of your users.
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." - Doug Gwyn
Would you consider something like CFG_FLASH_PROTECT_LIST in board config file which defines an array of blocks that needs to be kept protected? This would be a list similar to CFG_FLASH_BANKS_LIST. This would take care of important sections of flash (beyond u-boot and environment) that needs to be protected for that particular board.
Just to make sure I understand your intentions: such marked blocks would be handled in exactly the same way as the areas which are used to store U-Boot and the environment, i. e. they are protected by default after each reset, but can be unprotected by the user?
I see that such an extension would be useful for example to store FPGA images which might be vital to get the board running at all, and similar things.
Yes, I would consider such an extension, but then it must be generally available, i. e. for all flash types. I understand that probably the cfi_flash driver would be the first to support this feature, but maybe the code can be made generic enough that it can be called by custom flash drivers as well so all boards can use it (if they like), and we can use the same method for protecting U-Boot and it's environment sectors?
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk