VAR-SOM-MX6 Yocto GS R5 B2

VAR-SOM-MX6 - Yocto fsl-L3.10.17_1.0.0 Dora R5

Introduction

• This Yocto Dora release is based on Freescale fsl-L3.10.17_1.0.0GA release.
  
• This is the second beta version. Major features added:
  • New SPL based u-boot. This single image support in binary format all SOM versions.
  • New external Wlink6/Wilink8 drivers.
  • Support for on SOM eMMC
• Linux kernel: linux-imx_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga.
• Uboot: imx_v2013.10_beta_var3.
• Yocto Dora: Based on fsl-L3.10.17_1.0.0_iMX6qdls Freescale release (previous versions were based on the community release). Yocto Dora was re-structured as most of Variscite support code is located in meta-variscite folder.

Supported hardware and features

Feature	Description
Board support	VAR-DVK-MX6,VAR-SOM-MX6
CPU	i.MX6 Quad i.MX6 Dual i.MX6 Dual lite i.MX6 Solo
Software platform	Yocto Dora release. Freescale release version 4.1 Meta freescale community release for Dora
Nand Recovery	NAND-recovery SD V30 - can be downloaded from FTP
NAND Flash size support	128MB-1GB
eMMC	up to 64GB
DDR size support configuration	Solo: up to 512MB. DualLite/Dual/Quad: up to 4GB
SD-Card	+
Ethernet	10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
WLAN	Support for Wilink8, Dual band 5.0ghz + MIMO b/g/n
Bluetooth	4.0
CAN bus	+
I2C	+
SPI	+
USB host	+
USB OTG	Device / Host
Uarts	x3, up to 3.6 Mbps. Minicom avilable to use with the port
RTC	+
Display	HDMI 720P,1080P LVDS0 (On board LVDS to RGB bridge, EVK supports 800x480 resolution) LVDS1 external display
Audio	Line IN/ Line out
Camera	ov5640 camera sensor. CB402 board can be purchased separately
SATA	+

Variscite Yocto Dora release 2 for Freescale i.MX6 version 4.1.

Installing required packages

Follow the link below and install all the required packages on your machine.

www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/yocto-project-qs/yocto-project-qs.html

For example, if your building machine is an Ubuntu machine:

sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo build-essential chrpath libsdl1.2-dev xterm lzop

Variscite Yocto build is tested with Ubuntu 12.04 lts.

Download Yocto Dora for i.MX6 with Variscite VAR-SOM-MX6 support

Use  "repo" to fetch Yocto and apply Variscite's patches for the BSP support:

• Install the `repo` utility:

$ mkdir ~/bin (this step may not be needed if the bin folder already exists)
$ curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo
Add the following line to the .bashrc file to ensure that the ~/bin folder is in your PATH variable
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

NOTE:
Reference repo is available on FTP.

• Clone Yocto Dora from Freescale's git:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir var-som-mx6-dora-v5
$ cd var-som-mx6-dora-v5
$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email "Your Email"
$ repo init -u https://source.codeaurora.org/external/imx/fsl-arm-yocto-bsp.git -b imx-3.10.17-1.0.0_ga
$ repo sync

• Download ftp.variscite.com/VAR-SOM-MX6/Software/Linux/Yocto/Release5/var_yocto_v5r4.tar.bz2
  
• Extract tarball:

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5
$ tar xvf ~/Downloads/var_yocto_v5r4.tar.bz2
$ variscite/install

Comment:
This method will preserve the git repositories. It will enable you to track Variscite's changes, and your own.

Setup and Customize your Yocto build

Setup the environment and use build_var folder

$ . ./setup-environment build_var

Comment:
If you close your terminal and wish to build Yocto again, you should change directory to ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5 and run the above command again. build_var is your build directory and all bitbake commands should run from it

local.conf customizations

Edit you local.conf file:

$ gedit conf/local.conf 

Change parallel build and download directory: Set the build parameters to fully utilize your host machine's resources
BB_NUMBER_THREADS = '4'
PARALLEL_MAKE = '-j 6'
BB_NUMBER_THREADS should be your host machine's number of threads minus 2 or same. PARALLEL_MAKE should be the number of threads your host machine has plus two.

Change packages download directory: By defualt the path is set to "/opt/yocto_dl". Change ownership settings:

$ sudo mkdir /opt/yocto_dl
$ sudo chown <uname>.<uname> /opt/yocto_dl

Build your image

$ bitbake var-image-x11 

Other image build options:

image name	description
core-image-base	A console-only image that fully supports the target device hardware.
var-image-test	Image contains core-image-base plus Freescale test applications and multimedia components.
var-image-x11	Image contains core-image-sato with Freescale test applications and multimedia with hardware accelerated X11

The resulted images are locaated in tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6.
Looking at tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6 you will find 6 main files that are linked to the actual file

Image Name	How to use
var-image-x11-varsomimx6.ext3	Not in Use
var-image-x11-varsomimx6.sdcard	This image is for SD-Card boot. However, since default u-boot is built for NAND flash, follow the following procedure to replace with SD-Card U-boot. Booting from SD-Card is explained in details below. $ sudo dd if=tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/var-image-x11-varsomimx6.sdcard of=/dev/sdX bs=1024k Build u-boot out of tree for mmc as explained below and $ sudo dd if=SPL of=/dev/sdX bs=1K seek=1; sync $ sudo dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1K seek=69; sync devxxx = mmcblk0 or sdX. Do dmesg after you insert an SD-Card into your build system to figure out the device name Comment: Use "$ sudo gparted /dev/devxxx" Lable the second partition and call it "rootfs". Increase the second partition to include all avilable sd-card space.
var-image-x11-varsomimx6.tar.bz2	Used to create an NFS root file system on the host. $ sudo mkdir ../rootfs $ sudo rm -rf ../rootfs/* $ sudo tar xvf tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/var-image-x11-varsomimx6.tar.bz2 -C ../rootfs See apendix for setting an NFS server
var-image-x11-varsomimx6.ubi	Use the sdcard created above. Copy the file into it and use the folwing commands to flash them into nand. Coping files (mount the sd-card created above first): $ sudo mkdir /media/rootfs/opt/images $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/u-boot.img /media/rootfs/opt/images $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/SPL /media/rootfs/opt/images $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/uImage /media/rootfs/opt/images $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/uImage-imx6q-var-som.dtb /media/rootfs/opt/images/imx6q-var-som.dtb $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/uImage-imx6dl-var-som.dtb /media/rootfs/opt/images/imx6dl-var-som.dtb $ sudo cp tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/var-image-x11-varsomimx6.ubi /media/rootfs/opt/images $ sudo umount /media/rootfs $ sudo umount /media/BOT_varsomi Flashing on target: $ flash_eraseall /dev/mtd0 $ kobs-ng init -x /opt/images/SPL --search_exponent=1 -v $ flash_eraseall /dev/mtd1 $ nandwrite -p /dev/mtd1 /opt/images/u-boot.img Select one of: i.MX6Q / i.MX6D $ nandwrite -p /dev/mtd1 -s 0x1e0000 /opt/images/imx6q-var-som.dtb i.MX6DualLite / i.MX6 Solo $ nandwrite -p /dev/mtd1 -s 0x1e0000 /opt/images/imx6dl-var-som.dtb Linux kernel: $ flash_eraseall /dev/mtd2 $ nandwrite -p /dev/mtd2 /opt/images/uImage UBIFS: $ flash_eraseall /dev/mtd3 $ ubiformat /dev/mtd3 -f /opt/images/var-image-x11-varsomimx6.ubi -s 2048 -O 2048
uImage
u-boot	SPL

UBIFS

By default we create ubifs image for 0.5GB nand size. You can change the size by editing ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5/sources/meta-variscite/conf/machine/varsomimx6.conf
and change "include conf/machine/include/var-512mb-ubi.inc" into one of:

• "include conf/machine/include/var-512mb-ubi.inc"
• "include conf/machine/include/var-1gb-ubi.inc"
• "include conf/machine/include/var-2gb-ubi.inc"
• "include conf/machine/include/var-4gb-ubi.inc"

Anther option is to create the ubifs image manualy. 4GB nand example:

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5
$ sudo mkdir rootfs
$ sudo tar xvf build_var/tmp/deploy/images/varsomimx6/var-image-x11-varsomimx6.tar.bz2 -C rootfs/
$ sudo mkfs.ubifs -r rootfs/ -o var-image-x11-varsomimx6q4.ubifs -m 4096 -e 504KiB -c 7835
$ ubinize -o var-image-x11-varsomimx6q4.ubi -m 4096 -p 512KiB -s 4096 -O 4096 ubinize.cfg

$ cat ubinize.cfg 
[ubifs]
mode=ubi
image=var-image-x11-varsomimx6q4.ubifs
vol_id=0
vol_type=dynamic
vol_name=rootfs
vol_flags=autoresize

Next steps

In sections 1-6 we explained how to build Yocto for VAR-SOM-MX6. We explained the results for nand (UBI) and for sd-card. At this point you should have a bootable sd-card with UBI images on it. You should be able to boot from the sd-card using the boot select button and flash the nand. Next steps:

• Build and deploy the compiler and tools.
• Fetch u-boot and compile it out of Yocto tools.
• Fetch Linux kernel and compile it out of Yocto tools.

Toolchain installation for out of Yocto builds

Build the toolchain by:

$ bitbake meta-ide-support
$ bitbake meta-toolchain

The output will be located at tmp/deploy/sdk/. On a 64 bit Ubuntu you will get:

poky-eglibc-x86_64-meta-toolchain-cortexa9hf-vfp-neon-toolchain-1.5.sh.

Install the tools by running:

$ tmp/deploy/sdk/poky-eglibc-x86_64-meta-toolchain-cortexa9hf-vfp-neon-toolchain-1.5.1.sh

Reply to all defaults 'y'
The toolchain name depend on your build machine and may change.

Build U-Boot out of Yocto tree

Note:
This is a single u-boot image that supports all VAR-SOM-MX6 SOM's.

Obtain sources:

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5
$ git clone git://github.com/varigit/uboot-imx
$ cd uboot-imx/
$ git checkout -b imx_v2013.10_beta_var4 remotes/origin/imx_v2013.10_beta_var4

• follow above procedure for installing the toolchain

Build u-boot:

$ export PATH=/opt/poky/1.5.1/sysroots/x86_64-pokysdk-linux/usr/bin/arm-poky-linux-gnueabi:$PATH
clean tree:
$ make -j6 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- mrproper
Choose build for SD-Card or NAND Flash:
$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-  mx6var_som_sd_config
or
$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-  mx6var_som_nand_config
Build U-BOOT:
$ make -j6 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-

Flash u-boot to the sd-card:

$ sudo dd if=SPL of=/dev/sdxxx bs=1K seek=1; sync
$ sudo dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdxxx bs=1K seek=69; sync

In case of UBI copy it to the sd-card:

$ sudo cp SPL /media/rootfs/opt/images
$ sudo cp u-boot.img /media/rootfs/opt/images

Eject SD-Card gracefully from host machine

Build Linux out of Yocto tree

Get sources:

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-dora-v5/
$ git clone git://github.com/varigit/linux-2.6-imx.git
$ cd linux-2.6-imx/
$ git checkout -b imx_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga_var3 remotes/origin/imx_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga_var3

Build the Linux kernel:

$ export PATH=/opt/poky/1.5.1/sysroots/x86_64-pokysdk-linux/usr/bin/arm-poky-linux-gnueabi:$PATH
$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- mrproper
$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- imx_v7_var_defconfig
$ make -j6 LOADADDR=0x10008000 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- uImage
$ make -j6 LOADADDR=0x10008000 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- modules
Build the device tree for Dualite/Solo
$ make -j6 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- imx6dl-var-som.dtb
Build the device tree for Quad/Dual
$ make -j6 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- imx6q-var-som.dtb

Copy the uImage and device tree to the sd-card boot partition or to the opt/image in order to be flashed to the nand. Copy modules to the sd-card

$ sudo make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-poky-linux-gnueabi- modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/media/rootfs/

Useful Bitbake commands

Bitbake Cheat Sheet

Useful bitbake commands

i.MX Yocto Project: ltib versus bitbake