Falcon Mode Boot Issue in IMX8ulp

elgin_1950 — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 07:53:39 GMT

Hi Team,

I am facing an issue while booting the board in Falcon Mode.

I cloned the meta-imx-fastboot layer into my Yocto source directory.

While building, I encountered some issues related to imx-boot and the device tree because I am using a custom DTS that needs to be loaded onto our board. To address this, I configured the Falcon Mode arguments in my machine.conf as follows:

FALCON_KERNEL_DEVICETREE = "imx8ulp-custom"

After this configuration, I was able to generate the imx8ulp_no_uboot loader as described in the Falcon Mode steps.

I am using fitImage

KERNEL_IMAGETYPE = "fitImage"
KERNEL_CLASSES:append = " kernel-fitimage"
IMAGE_BOOT_FILES = "fitImage"

I then flashed the board using the following commands:

sudo uuu -b emmc_all <default-loader> *.wic
sudo uuu -b emmc <default-loader> <imx8ulp_no_uboot>

After flashing, when I boot the board, it fails to boot and generates the following error:

U-Boot SPL 2025.04-gb9f705c183f0 (Jun 04 2025 - 09:48:20 +0000)
Normal Boot
ELE firmware version 2.0.2-85b63cb9
upower_apd_inst_isr: entry
upower_init: soc_id=48
upower_init: version:11.11.13
upower_init: start uPower RAM service
user_upwr_rdy_callb: soc=b
user_upwr_rdy_callb: RAM version:12.18
Turning on switches...
Turn on switches ok
Turning on memories...
Turn on memories ok
Clearing DDR retention...
Clear DDR retention ok
SEC0: RNG instantiated
Trying to boot from MMC1
Partition 1 invalid on device 0
spl_register_fat_device: fat register err - -1
Partition 1 invalid on device 0
spl_register_fat_device: fat register err - -1
spl_load_image_fat: error reading image u-boot-atf-container.img, err - -1
Error: -2
SPL: failed to boot from all boot devices
### ERROR ### Please RESET the board ###

Could you please help me understand the cause of this error and suggest how I can resolve the Falcon Mode boot issue?

Re: Falcon Mode Boot Issue in IMX8ulp

Zhiming_Liu — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 02:20:07 GMT

Hi @elgin_1950

If you sync your DTS content and defconfig to the EVK code that Falcon supports by default, will there still be any issues?

Best Regards,
Zhiming

Re: Falcon Mode Boot Issue in IMX8ulp

elgin_1950 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:28:53 GMT

Hi @Zhiming_Liu sorry for late reply

I have fixed the issue, as Falcon mode was taking the normal kernel images instead of the fitImage.

However, is there a way to load the fitImage through Falcon mode?

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Falcon Mode Boot Issue in IMX8ulp

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