Difference between revisions of "BeagleBoardDebian"

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=Native Built Debian Kernel=
 
=Native Built Debian Kernel=
  
Note, this process will take some time to complete a kernel build (5-6 hours on my 2.5Ghz amd64 Debian PC). Tweak and test your kernel's .config and build test uImage's thru the standard kernel cross compile method. Specially don't forget to have the frame buffer enabled so your kernel's console will show up on the hdmi/lcd screen. (The deb's i built listed at the bottom are missing this.)
+
Note, this process will take some time to complete a kernel build (5-6 hours on my 2.5Ghz amd64 Debian PC). Test and verify your kernel's .config and uImage's thru the standard kernel cross compile method first. Don't forget to have the frame buffer enabled so your kernel's console will show up on the hdmi/lcd screen. (The deb's I built listed at the bottom of this wiki are missing this feature.)
  
 
==qemubuilder==
 
==qemubuilder==

Revision as of 13:42, 17 August 2008

This page is about running a (ARM) Debian distribution at BeagleBoard. BeagleBoard will boot the (ARM) Debian distribution from SD card. To prepare the SD card and install (ARM) Debian on it, QEMU on host PC will be used, following Aurélien Jarno's excellent Debian on an emulated ARM machine howto.

QEMU

Install QEMU on your host PC. This assumes that your host PC is running Debian as well. If not, install QEMU the way your host PC distribution uses.

apt-get install qemu

Format SD Card

You need a SD card 1GB or greater.

Currently (Aug 15, 2008) ext2load doesn't seem to work in the current u-boot beagle board git repo. For the moment follow the LinuxBootDisk guide to setup a 50-100MB FAT partition on your SD Card to use u-boot's fatload.

For reference, this is a 2GB sd card after installing Debian:

Disk /dev/sde: 2032 MB, 2032664576 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 247 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ab123

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1               1           6       48163+   6  FAT16
/dev/sde2  *            7         228     1783215   83  Linux
/dev/sde3             229         247      152617+   5  Extended
/dev/sde5             229         247      152586   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Preparation

To stay organized create working directory.

wget http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/arm-versatile/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile
wget http://people.debian.org/~aurel32/arm-versatile/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile 
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-arm/current/images/rpc/netboot/initrd.gz 

Install Debian

To install (ARM) Debian inside QEMU:

sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile -initrd initrd.gz -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/ram"

Note: sudo access is required to access /dev/sde directly.

Debian-Installer will complain that it can't find kernel modules, answer [yes] to continue the install. We will be providing our own kernel.

Running Debian

sudo qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -kernel vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile -initrd initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile -hda /dev/sde -append "root=/dev/sda2"

Note: Time will be incorrect.

login as root, change password
apt-get install ntpdate
ntpdate pool.ntp.org
reboot.. relogin change password...

Stop QEMU and remount SD card to copy uImage to FAT partition:

cd /media/disk-1/
wget http://beagleboard.googlecode.com/files/uImage_OTG

Beagleboard

Insert SD Card and power up beagleBoard.

Boot

Using a serial program, stop u-boot and add these commands:

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage_OTG; bootm 0x80300000'
setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rw rootwait nohz=off'
boot

To force the Beagleboard to always boot the sd card image:

setenv bootcmd 'mmcinit; fatload mmc 0:1 0x80300000 uImage_OTG; bootm 0x80300000'
setenv bootargs 'console=ttyS2,115200n8 noinitrd root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext3 rw rootwait nohz=off'
saveenv
boot

Debian on Beagleboard

Debian on BeagleBoard uses the following configuration:

  • Console log = Serial Terminal
  • User Console = HDMI port + usb (keyboard,etc)

Current Issues

  1. Swap disabled: change /dev/hda5 -> /dev/mmcblk0p5 in /etc/fstab (artifact of qemu install to /dev/hdaX)
  2. RTC seems to be not enabled: use ntpdate when ethernet works, or issue date MMDDHHMMSSYYYY

Native Built Debian Kernel

Note, this process will take some time to complete a kernel build (5-6 hours on my 2.5Ghz amd64 Debian PC). Test and verify your kernel's .config and uImage's thru the standard kernel cross compile method first. Don't forget to have the frame buffer enabled so your kernel's console will show up on the hdmi/lcd screen. (The deb's I built listed at the bottom of this wiki are missing this feature.)

qemubuilder

Install qemubuilder on your host PC. (For me, i've only had success with Debian Etch, Ubuntu 8.04 will fail during qemubuilder's 2nd stage.)

apt-get install qemubuilder

Create config file: (for reference)

KERNEL_IMAGE=/home/voodoo/arm/image/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-versatile
INITRD=/home/voodoo/arm/image/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-versatile
MIRRORSITE=http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
ARCH=arm
BASEPATH=/var/cache/pbuilder/base-arm.qemu
MEMORY_MEGS=256

Create qemubuilder image.

qemubuilder --create --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

Login into qemubuilder image.

qemubuilder --login --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

Reference: to update qemubuilder's image.

qemubuilder --update --distribution etch --configfile arch.config

Install Dependencies

apt-get install git-core kernel-package fakeroot build-essential curl libncurses-dev

u-boot

Download sources and checkout test branch.

git clone git://www.sakoman.net/git/u-boot-omap3.git u-boot_beagle
cd u-boot_beagle/
git checkout -b beagle test

Using nano/preferred editor, modify u-boot's Makefile, to use native gcc.

CROSS_COMPILE = arm-none-linux-gnueabi- -> CROSS_COMPILE = 

Build u-boot

make distclean
make omap3530beagle_config
make

Note: this should eventually error out. The goal isn't to build a native u-boot but just the u-boot's 'mkimage' such that a u-boot compatible uImage can be build later.

Add /tools/ to $PATH

PATH=/home/debian/u-boot_beagle/tools:"${PATH}"

Linux Kernel

Download Linux Sources, and switch to preferred branch

git clone git://source.mvista.com/git/linux-omap-2.6.git
git checkout -b beagle v2.6.26-omap1

Using nano/preferred editor, modify kernel's Makefile, to use native gcc.

CROSS_COMPILE := arm-none-linux-gnueabi- -> CROSS_COMPILE := 

Build Linux Kernel

cd linux-omap-2.6/
make distclean
make omap3_beagle_defconfig
make menuconfig

Create Debian linux-image* & linux-headers* Package

make-kpkg clean
CONCURRENCY_LEVEL=1 fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers

Note: these are listed one directory up (cd ..)

U-boot Image

make uImage

Transfer via ftp/etc uImage, linux-image*, & linux-headers* outside the qemubuilder machine. (qemubuilder doesn't save any contents.) Using QEMU method listed above remount the sd card and install the linux-image* & linux-header* deb files. Then remount the sd's fat file partition and add the new uImage for u-boot.

Successfully Built Images

Example Debian Kernel Images (frame buffer)