Files
Joachim Wiberg 784b911253 patches/genimage: add gpt-protective-first option for hybrid MBR
In a hybrid MBR the conventional layout (used by gdisk and others) is:

  MBR[0] = 0xEE  (GPT protective, covers whole disk)
  MBR[1..3] = user-selected GPT partitions with legacy type codes

genimage currently appends the 0xEE entry after the data partitions,
producing the opposite order.  This is fine for most platforms, but
breaks firmware that detects GPT by inspecting only MBR entry 0: seeing
a non-0xEE type there it falls into pure-MBR mode and cannot look up
GPT partitions by name.

The TF-A partition driver (drivers/partition/partition.c) exhibits
exactly this behaviour: load_mbr_header() copies entry[0] and checks
type == 0xEE to select between MBR and GPT mode.  The MediaTek MT7622
platform (BananaPi BPI-R64) is a concrete example where this matters.

On the other hand, Raspberry Pi firmware scans all MBR slots for a
bootable FAT32 partition.  If slot 0 holds a 0xEE protective entry the
firmware switches to GPT detection, looks for an EFI System Partition
UUID, and reports "no bootable partitions" when none is found.

Add an opt-in hdimage option `gpt-protective-first = true` that places
the 0xEE entry at slot 0 and shifts data partitions to slots 1..3.
The default (false) preserves the existing genimage behaviour so that
platforms like Raspberry Pi continue to work without any changes.

Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>
2026-03-10 12:11:10 +01:00
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