MIPS: generic: Remove undefined image 'ramdisk'

[PATCH] MIPS: generic: Remove undefined image 'ramdisk'

Posted by Jeff Johnson 1 day, 23 hours ago

As originally reported by Guenter Roeck [1] and subsequently confirmed by
me [2], a MIPS allmodconfig build can fail with:

Error: configuration 'pcb110' references undefined image 'ramdisk' in property 'ramdisk'
make[3]: *** [../arch/mips/boot/Makefile:173: arch/mips/boot/vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 1
make[2]: *** [../arch/mips/Makefile:403: vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 2

Or with:

Error: configuration 'pcb105' references undefined image 'ramdisk' in property 'ramdisk'
make[3]: *** [../arch/mips/boot/Makefile:173: arch/mips/boot/vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 1
make[2]: *** [../arch/mips/Makefile:403: vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 2

Guenter's original report made the observation that this was triggered by
an operating system update since he saw the same errors appear on
previously working kernels after the update.

I prompted an LLM with the information available and it provided the
following additional information:

This is not a kernel bug — it's a mkimage behavior change in u-boot-tools.
Your system recently received an upgrade from u-boot-tools 2024.01 =>
2025.10 (Ubuntu 24.04 noble-security), which included two upstream commits
from June 2025:

- tools: mkimage: validate image references in FIT configurations (commit 7a8b25a)
- tools: mkimage: propagate error codes from fit_handle_file() (commit 21705d3)

These commits made mkimage strictly validate that every image name
referenced in a configurations node actually exists in the images section.
Previously it silently ignored undefined references, now it errors out.

The offending files in the kernel are arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
and arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S — their configurations reference
ramdisk = "ramdisk" but no ramdisk image node is ever defined anywhere in the
FIT source. This was always technically wrong; the new u-boot-tools 2025.10
just enforces it.

To fix the issue, remove the stale ramdisk references from both ITS files.

Assisted-by: LLM
Reported-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/f817c158-412b-4fd1-9941-9c2ff421b91a@roeck-us.net/ # [1]
Reported-by: Jeff Johnson <jeff.johnson@oss.qualcomm.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/7eca1c7f-52d5-43bc-afcb-1f6ac198e391@oss.qualcomm.com/ # [2]
Signed-off-by: Jeff Johnson <jeff.johnson@oss.qualcomm.com>
---
 arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S | 2 --
 arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S  | 1 -
 2 files changed, 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S b/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
index c2b8d479b26c..a91a06f1254f 100644
--- a/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
+++ b/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
@@ -28,13 +28,11 @@
 			description = "Jaguar2 Linux kernel";
 			kernel = "kernel";
 			fdt = "fdt-jaguar2_pcb110";
-			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
 		};
 		pcb111 {
 			description = "Jaguar2 Linux kernel";
 			kernel = "kernel";
 			fdt = "fdt-jaguar2_pcb111";
-			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
 		};
 	};
 };
diff --git a/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S b/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
index dde833efe980..3b89e208d29a 100644
--- a/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
+++ b/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@
 			description = "Serval Linux kernel";
 			kernel = "kernel";
 			fdt = "fdt-serval_pcb105";
-			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
 		};
 	};
 };

---
base-commit: f0100363d8c374bd8e9ea7c9ba02744f0b802ca4
change-id: 20260922-mips-ramdisk-fix-bfd73f30eee1

Re: [PATCH] MIPS: generic: Remove undefined image 'ramdisk'

Posted by Guenter Roeck 1 day, 22 hours ago

On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 08:19:04AM -0700, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> As originally reported by Guenter Roeck [1] and subsequently confirmed by
> me [2], a MIPS allmodconfig build can fail with:
> 
> Error: configuration 'pcb110' references undefined image 'ramdisk' in property 'ramdisk'
> make[3]: *** [../arch/mips/boot/Makefile:173: arch/mips/boot/vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 1
> make[2]: *** [../arch/mips/Makefile:403: vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 2
> 
> Or with:
> 
> Error: configuration 'pcb105' references undefined image 'ramdisk' in property 'ramdisk'
> make[3]: *** [../arch/mips/boot/Makefile:173: arch/mips/boot/vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 1
> make[2]: *** [../arch/mips/Makefile:403: vmlinux.gz.itb] Error 2
> 
> Guenter's original report made the observation that this was triggered by
> an operating system update since he saw the same errors appear on
> previously working kernels after the update.

Ah yes, my "fix" was to stop building mips:allmodconfig.

> 
> I prompted an LLM with the information available and it provided the
> following additional information:
> 
> This is not a kernel bug — it's a mkimage behavior change in u-boot-tools.
> Your system recently received an upgrade from u-boot-tools 2024.01 =>
> 2025.10 (Ubuntu 24.04 noble-security), which included two upstream commits
> from June 2025:
> 
> - tools: mkimage: validate image references in FIT configurations (commit 7a8b25a)
> - tools: mkimage: propagate error codes from fit_handle_file() (commit 21705d3)
> 
> These commits made mkimage strictly validate that every image name
> referenced in a configurations node actually exists in the images section.
> Previously it silently ignored undefined references, now it errors out.
> 
> The offending files in the kernel are arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
> and arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S — their configurations reference
> ramdisk = "ramdisk" but no ramdisk image node is ever defined anywhere in the
> FIT source. This was always technically wrong; the new u-boot-tools 2025.10
> just enforces it.
> 
> To fix the issue, remove the stale ramdisk references from both ITS files.
> 
> Assisted-by: LLM
> Reported-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/f817c158-412b-4fd1-9941-9c2ff421b91a@roeck-us.net/ # [1]
> Reported-by: Jeff Johnson <jeff.johnson@oss.qualcomm.com>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/7eca1c7f-52d5-43bc-afcb-1f6ac198e391@oss.qualcomm.com/ # [2]
> Signed-off-by: Jeff Johnson <jeff.johnson@oss.qualcomm.com>

Tested-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>

> ---
>  arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S | 2 --
>  arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S  | 1 -
>  2 files changed, 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S b/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
> index c2b8d479b26c..a91a06f1254f 100644
> --- a/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
> +++ b/arch/mips/generic/board-jaguar2.its.S
> @@ -28,13 +28,11 @@
>  			description = "Jaguar2 Linux kernel";
>  			kernel = "kernel";
>  			fdt = "fdt-jaguar2_pcb110";
> -			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
>  		};
>  		pcb111 {
>  			description = "Jaguar2 Linux kernel";
>  			kernel = "kernel";
>  			fdt = "fdt-jaguar2_pcb111";
> -			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
>  		};
>  	};
>  };
> diff --git a/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S b/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
> index dde833efe980..3b89e208d29a 100644
> --- a/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
> +++ b/arch/mips/generic/board-serval.its.S
> @@ -18,7 +18,6 @@
>  			description = "Serval Linux kernel";
>  			kernel = "kernel";
>  			fdt = "fdt-serval_pcb105";
> -			ramdisk = "ramdisk";
>  		};
>  	};
>  };
> 
> ---
> base-commit: f0100363d8c374bd8e9ea7c9ba02744f0b802ca4
> change-id: 20260922-mips-ramdisk-fix-bfd73f30eee1
>