Running OpenOCD on Linux

''This guide contains general information on running OpenOCD, but all examples use the. For examples using the, see Running OpenOCD on Linux with the Beagleboard.''

OpenOCD provides a command line interface for interacting with embedded devices. To use OpenOCD you will need to run it from the command line. This guide includes basic information about using the Ubuntu command line interface, the terminal window. If you are already proficient with the command line, you can find information specific to OpenOCD under the OpenOCD Config Files and Telnet Connection headings.

This guide was written for the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS release. You may encounter differences on other Linux distributions.

Opening the Command Prompt
Open the Applications menu from the menu bar on your desktop, and choose Accessories > Terminal. Ubuntu should open black window with white text and a prompt.

Command Prompt Basics - Paths and Navigation
The command prompt displays your current directory location. You will need to navigate to the OpenOCD directory to run it. To change directories, type 'cd followed by a file path. File paths can be absolute...

cd /home cd /usr/local/lib

...or relative...

cd lib/mingw cd TinCanTools/openocd

Absolute paths are from your root directory, and begin with a slash. Relative paths are from the current directory and do not begin with a slash. File paths are case sensitive.

If you need to navigate to your home directory, type cd by itself like this...

cd

If you need to go back to the parent of the current directory, you can type...

cd ..

You can even use this as part of a longer relative path. For example...

cd ../../TinCanTools

...would take you up two levels, and then into a folder called TinCanTools.

To reach your root directory, you can type:

cd /

If you need to include your home directory in a path (home/USERNAME, replacing USERNAME with the name of your account), you can type it out as normal, or you can use the tilde key (~) as shorthand. For example:

cd /home/USERNAME/TinCanTools cd ~/TinCanTools

...both take you to the same place.

Running OpenOCD
Navigate to the directory containing your openocd executable. In the folder with the executable, make sure you also see three directories called interface/, board/, and target/. If you don't see these directories, create a new folder somewhere on your computer containing openocd, interface/, board/, and target/. (If you have just compiled OpenOCD yourself, you can find the executable in openocd/src or openocd-/src, and the three directories you need in openocd/tcl or openocd-/tcl.

In the directory containing the openocd executable, type...

sudo openocd -f path_to/cfg_file [-f path_to/other_cfg_file]

Replace path_to/cfg_file and so on with the .cfg files for your hardware devices. For example, to run OpenOCD for the Flyswatter2 and the hammer, you would use:

sudo openocd -f interface/flyswatter2.cfg -f board/hammer.cfg

For the original Flyswatter and the Beagleboard, you would use:

sudo openocd -f interface/flyswatter.cfg -f board/ti_beagleboard.cfg

See below for more information on config files.

Telnet Connection
OpenOCD runs as a daemon. It accepts connections from other programs, but does not provide any means for you to give it commands directly. Once OpenOCD is running on your computer you will need to connect to it through another program, such as telnet.

To run telnet and connect to OpenOCD, open a new command prompt. From any directory, type:

telnet localhost 4444

You may need to run telnet as root:

sudo telnet localhost 4444

You should see a simple prompt (>). From this prompt you will be able to send commands to OpenOCD. To exit the telnet prompt, press CTRL + C.

OpenOCD and Permissions
OpenOCD needs administrator privileges to interact with your USB drivers. Even Linux users with administrator privileges do not typically log on with those privileges active. However, Linux provides commands to run another command as the root user. On Ubuntu, this command is sudo. To run a program as root, type sudo, then a space, then the name of the program. For example...

openocd -f interface/flyswatter.cfg -f board/hammer.cfg

...runs OpenOCD with your user permissions, and likely prevents OpenOCD from interacting with libUSB. However...

sudo openocd openocd -f interface/flyswatter.cfg -f board/hammer.cfg

...runs OpenOCD as root, with full permission to access your USB drivers.

When you use the sudo command, Linux will prompt you for the root user's password. If you do not have access to this password, contact your system administrator. You can also configure Linux to allow OpenOCD to access specific hardware devices without sudo. See Accessing Devices without Sudo.

Search Path
OpenOCD searches in its own directory first for config files. This guide assumes that the openocd binary is in a directory containing three folders, called interface/, board/, and target/. If you have just compiled OpenOCD yourself, you will need to move the openocd executable somewhere where it can find interface/, board/, and target, as described in the compilation guides on this page.

You can also tell OpenOCD where to look for interface/, board/, and target/ with the -s flag, like this:

sudo openocd -s ../tcl -f interface/flyswatter.cfg -f board/hammer.cfg

This would tell OpenOCD to look for interface/ and board/ one level up in a directory called tcl/. For more information, see OpenOCD Config File Paths.

OpenOCD Config Files
Each time you use OpenOCD you will need to configure it by passing it paths to configuration files. In the OpenOCD release, these files are found in openocd-/tcl and its subdirectories. From the tcl directory, the configuration file for the Flyswatter is at interface/flyswatter.cfg. The file for the TinCanTools Hammer is at board/hammer.cfg. If your copy of OpenOCD includes support for the Flyswatter2, its config file is at interface/flyswatter2.cfg.

When you start OpenOCD, you tell it to use the config files for your hardware with the -f switch, like this:

sudo openocd -f path_to/cfg_file [-f path_to/other_cfg_file]

For example, suppose you want to run OpenOCD for the Flyswatter2 and the Hammer. The current directory contains the OpenOCD executable and the board, interface, and target directories provided with the OpenOCD source. You would type:

sudo openocd -f interface/flyswatter2.cfg -f board/hammer.cfg

Be aware that config files may contain paths to other config files. For example hammer.cfg, the config file for the TinCanTools Hammer, contains this line:

source [find target/samsung_s3c2410.cfg]

When you run OpenOCD with the hammer.cfg file, OpenOCD searches from the current directory for target/samsung_s3c2410.cfg. If the current directory does not contain OpenOCD's target directory, it may not find the samsung_s3c2410.cfg file, or it may find a different samsung_s3c2410.cfg file elsewhere on your system. You can avoid this by giving OpenOCD the path to your config files. For more information, see OpenOCD Config File Paths.

If you have compiled OpenOCD yourself, the easiest way to avoid these issues is to copy the openocd binary from your openocd-/src directory to your openocd-/tcl directory. To run OpenOCD, navigate to openocd-/tcl in the command terminal and run OpenOCD as above. You can also create a new directory anywhere on your system, and copy the openocd binary and the contents of openocd-/tcl to the new directory.

Running Commands on Startup: the -c Flag
You can instruct OpenOCD to run a command on startup with the -c flag. For example:

sudo openocd -f interface/flyswatter.cfg -c "jtag_khz 6000" -f board/hammer.cfg

The jtag_khz command sets the Flyswatter's clock speed. Starting OpenOCD like this does the following, in order:


 * run commands in flyswatter.cfg
 * run the OpenOCD command to set the Flyswatter's clock speed
 * run commands in hammer.cfg (which loads samsung_s3c2410.cfg and runs commands found there)