As we know, the bootloader stores its configuration into an area of the flash called the environment. The environment is basically stored as a sequence of null-terminated strings, with a little header containing a checksum at the beginning. Using the “printenv”, “setenv” and “saveenv” commands in U-Boot, while this environment can easily be manipulated. It is sometimes desirable to be able to generate a binary image of an environment that can be directly flashed next to the bootloader, kernel and root filesystem into the device’s flash memory.
In order to modify the U-Boot environment variables from user space, the program called “mkenvimage” is needed, this program