VAR-SOM-MX6 Yocto Fido R3 Build Yocto release

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VAR-SOM-MX6 - Yocto fsl-3.14.38_6qp Fido R2 Build Yocto release

Installing required packages

Follow the link below and install all 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 gcc-multilib build-essential chrpath socat libsdl1.2-dev xterm lib32ncurses5-dev

Variscite Yocto build was tested with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS only!

Documentation

Documentation are available for Download from FreescaleFidoDocuments

Download Yocto Fido for i.MX6 Freescale source

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email "Your Email"
$ 
$ 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
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
$ 
$ mkdir ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ repo init -u git://git.freescale.com/imx/fsl-arm-yocto-bsp.git -b imx-3.14.38-6QP_ga
$ repo sync

Download Yocto Fido i.MX6 with Meta Variscite VAR-SOM-MX6 support

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido/sources
$ git clone https://github.com/varigit/meta-variscite-mx6/
$ cd meta-variscite-mx6/
$ git checkout -b imx_3.14.38_6qp-var02 remotes/origin/imx_3.14.38_6qp-var02
$ cp scripts/var-setup-release.sh ../../
$ cd ../meta-fsl-bsp-release
$ patch -p1 < ../meta-variscite-mx6/patch/0001-Fix-FSL-multi-patch-append-bug.patch
$ patch -p1 < ../meta-variscite-mx6/patch/0001-Fix-FSL-multi-platform-on-mesa-demos.patch

Setup and build Yocto

You can create an image for QT5/X11 or create an image for QT5/Embedded. Please select one of the following option:

Setup and build Yocto QT5/X

NOTE: Due to NAND flash size limitation on Variscite's default EVK (512MB), we have created a "QT5-minimal" image. which is similar to Freescale's QT5 image, but QT demos removed.

fsl-image-qt5 will build without the ubifs product but with all Freescale's QT5 demos.

Setup the environment and use build_var folder
Note: Run only once! 

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ source var-setup-release.sh -b build_x11 -e x11
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5-minimal
or
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5
Comment:
If you close your terminal and wish to build Yocto again, you should run (instead of var-setup-release.sh):

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ . ./setup-environment build_x11
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5-minimal
or

$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5

Setup and build Yocto QT5/Embedded

Setup the environment and use build_var folder
Note: Run only once! 

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ source var-setup-release.sh -b build_fb -e fb
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5
Comment:
If you close your terminal and wish to build Yocto again, you should do:

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ . ./setup-environment build_fb
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5

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 default it is set to: DL_DIR ?= "${BSPDIR}/downloads/" change it to a global folder like DL_DIR ?= "/opt/yocto_dl/". Don't forget to create the folder and make it available without a sudo permissions.

NOTE:
If you don't need Chromium browser edit conf/local.conf and comment out the chromium line.

Build Results

The resulted images are locaated in tmp/deploy/images/var-som-mx6.

Image Name
 How to use
fsl-image-qt5-minimal-var-som-mx6.ext3
 Not in Use
fsl-image-qt5-minimal-var-som-mx6.sdcard This image is for SD-Card boot.
It can be flashed as-is on an SD-Card and you can boot your system
form SD-Card, according to the relevant startup-guide of your product (usually requires to press the boot select button, or toggle a dip-switch).

For detailed information refer to Create a sample SDCARD section below Create a bootable SD-Card.

fsl-image-qt5-minimal-var-som-mx6.tar.bz2 Used to create an NFS root file system on the host. See apendix for setting an NFS server
fsl-image-qt5-minimal-var-som-mx6.ubi A complete UBIFS file-system binary, for NAND Flash
uImage Linux kernel image, same binary for SD-Card or NAND Flash
SPL-nand SPL built for NAND-Flash. The SPL is pre-u-boot SW component, required for DDR initialization
u-boot-nand-2014.04-r0.img U-Boot built for NAND Flash.
SPL-sd SPL built for SD-Card boot
u-boot-sd-2014.04-r0.img u-boot built for SD-Card boot, or eMMC boot in case of DART-MX6.
Device Tree Name
 SOM type
 Carrier Board type
 LCD Type
 Evaluation Kit name
uImage-imx6q-var-som.dtb VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (Quad / Dual) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive/Resistive touch VAR-DVK-MX6_V2-PRO
VAR-STK-MX6_V2
uImage-imx6q-var-som-vsc.dtb VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (Quad / Dual) VAR-SOLOCustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch N/A
uImage-imx6dl-var-som.dtb VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (DualLite/ Solo) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive/Resistive touch N/A
uImage-imx6dl-var-som-solo-vsc.dtb VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-SOLOCustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch VAR-DVK-SOLO/DUAL VAR-STK-SOLO/DUAL
uImage-imx6dl-var-som-solo.dtb VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive/Resistive touch N/A
uImage-imx6q-var-dart.dtb VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-DT6CustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch VAR-STK-DT6.VAR-DVK-DT6

Create a bootable SD-Card

SD-Card structure

Sdcard part.png
The SD-Card is divided into 3 sections as shown in the picture above.
The first unallocated 4MB are saved space for SPL and u-boot.img. it can be replaced with a dd command described in u-boot out of tree section below.
The second partition is a fat16 partition used for the device tree files and Linux uImage file. You can copy them as described in the Linux out of tree section.
The third partition is an ext3 partition that contains the complete file system and modules.

Yocto pre-built bootable SD-Card

The Yocto build products contains many files as explained in Build Results section above including a ".sdcard" file. For example fsl-image-qt5-minimal-var-som-mx6.sdcard or fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6.sdcard depend on your build. This is a complete image to be flashed directly to an SD card.

Example usage: 

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido/build_x11
$ sudo dd if=tmp/deploy/images/var-som-mx6/fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6.sdcard of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
Replace sdX with the right device name. This can be obtained by "dmesg" command on your host Linux PC, after the SD card reader is inserted.
  • Note: Booting your system from an SD card requires pressing the boot-select button, or switching the relevant DIP switch to "Boot from SD card", according to the relevant start-up guide of your system"

Drawbacks of the native .sdcard yocto-built image:

  • The second partition size don't use the entire SD-Card.
  • The second partition is not labeled as rootfs.
  • The NAND and eMMC flashing scripts are not included.

Create an extended SD-Card

Variscite provides the var-create-yocto-sdcard.sh script which creates our NAND/eMMC recovery rescue SD card - an SD card based on the fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6 filesystem, which utilizes the full capacity of the used SD card, and copies the NAND-Flash burning scripts and relevant binaries for your convenience.
Later, you will be able to follow either the more automatic VAR-SOM-MX6 Yocto NAND Recovery guide or the more manual VAR-SOM-MX6 NAND Flash burning guide to burn your images to NAND-Flash or eMMC.
See usage below: 

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido/build_x11
$ sudo ../sources/meta-variscite-mx6/scripts/var_mk_yocto_sdcard/var-create-yocto-sdcard.sh /dev/sdX
Replace sdX with the right device name.

The script assumes both fsl-image-qt5-minimal and fsl-image-qt5 recipes were bitbaked. It is very easy to modify it and adopt it to your requirements.

Flash images to NAND

Please refer to VAR-SOM-MX6 NAND Flash burning

Boot the board with a bootable SD-Card

Booting your specific Developer Kit

Select the one you are using.

MX6CustomBoard

Booting your MX6CustomBoard system from SDCARD requires while powering up the system. See picture below.

Mx6 boot.jpg

To boot board with SD-Card, Follow the steps below:

  • Power-off the board.
  • Insert the SD card into the SD/MMC slot of the carrier board (DVK)
  • Push the middle button (Boot Select) and hold
  • Power-up board
  • Release the middle button (Boot Select) after system starts to boot.
  • The board will automatically boot into Linux from SD-Card

SoloCustomBoard

Booting your system requires switching the relevant dip-switch to "Boot from MMC". See picture below.

Solo boot.jpg

To boot board with SD-Card, Follow the steps below:

  • Power-off the board.
  • Insert the SD card into the SD/MMC slot of the carrier board (DVK)
  • Switch the relevant dip-switch to "Boot from MMC"
  • Power-up board
  • The board will automatically boot into Linux from SD-Card

DT6CustomBoard

Booting your system requires switching the relevant dip-switch to "Boot from SD-Card". See picture below.

Dart boot.jpg

To boot board with SD-Card, Follow the steps below:

  • Power-off the board.
  • Insert the SD card into the SD/MMC slot of the carrier board (DVK)
  • Switch the relevant dip-switch to "Boot from SD-Card"
  • Power-up board
  • The board will automatically boot into Linux from SD-Card

Automatic device Tree selection in U-Boot

Upon reset you will see the U-BOOT-SPL printouts. It will print the SOM configuration:

  • Boot Device MMC or NAND
  • Ram size
  • Production information

For example: 

U-Boot SPL 2013.10-00108-ga2bb081 (Dec 06 2015 - 10:06:45)
i.MX6Q SOC P-STD DDR EEPROM configuration
Part number: VSM-MX6-C01
Assembly: AS15
Date of production: 2015 Nov 02
Ram size 1024
Boot Device : MMC1
Load image from RAW...

As explained in the above Build Results table we have 6 optional configurations.
We implemented in U-BOOT and automatic device tree selection, so when kernel boots, the u-boot will load the corresponding device tree according to On-SOM configuration. This is only valid for booting from SDCARD.
Based on the hardware we will set 2 environment variables in U-Boot.

  • fdt_file - Will be set to reflect SOM/CustomBoard pair.
  • screen_alternate=yes - Will be appended to all relevant bootargs in case that you are using capacitive display.


The table below list the possible options:

SOM type
 Carrier Board type
 LCD Type
 Evaluation Kit name
 Device Tree Name
 Screen Alternate
VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (Quad / Dual) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive touch VAR-DVK-MX6_V2-PRO
VAR-STK-MX6_V2 		imx6q-var-som.dtb Yes
VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (Quad / Dual) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Resistive touch VAR-DVK-MX6_V2-PRO
VAR-STK-MX6_V2 		imx6q-var-som.dtb No
VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (Quad / Dual) VAR-SOLOCustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch N/A imx6q-var-som-vsc.dtb N/A
VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (DualLite/ Solo) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive touch N/A imx6dl-var-som.dtb Yes
VAR-SOM-MX6_V2 (DualLite/ Solo) VAR-MX6CustomBoard Resistive touch N/A imx6dl-var-som.dtb No
VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-SOLOCustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch VAR-DVK-SOLO/DUAL VAR-STK-SOLO/DUAL imx6dl-var-som-solo-vsc.dtb N/A
VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-MX6CustomBoard Capacitive/Resistive touch N/A imx6dl-var-som-solo.dtb N/A
VAR-SOM-SOLO / VAR-SOM-DUAL VAR-DT6CustomBoard Capacitive LVDS touch VAR-STK-DT6.VAR-DVK-DT6 imx6q-var-dart.dtb N/A

Disable Automatic Device Tree selection

To disable the automatic device tree selection in u-boot: 

$ setenv var_auto_fdt_file=N
$ saveenv

Now you can set the device tree to meet your requirments. For example: 

$ setenv fdt_file=imx6q-var-som.dtb
$ screen_alternate=yes
$ saveenv

Will select device tree that has i.MX6 Quad/Dual running on MX6CustomBoard.

Comment:
Make sure you don't set am illegal value like "imx6q-var-som.dtb" in a QUAD that is running on SoloCustomBoard.

What happen when you flash to eMMC/NAND

When you flash to NAND we use the same algorithm as the table above but we pick and choose specific device tree and flash it.

QT5/Embedded environment variables

The QT5/Embedded require environment variables to run correctly. You need to have them avilable on the target. For example /etc/profile.d/tslib.sh can be edited.

export TSLIB_TSDEVICE=/dev/input/touchscreen0
export TSLIB_CALIBFILE=/etc/pointercal
export TSLIB_CONFFILE=/etc/ts.conf
export QT_QPA_GENERIC_PLUGINS=tslib:/dev/input/event0
export QT_QPA_EGLFS_PHYSICAL_HEIGHT=480
export QT_QPA_EGLFS_PHYSICAL_WIDTH=800
export QT_QPA_EGLFS_HEIGHT=480
export QT_QPA_EGLFS_WIDTH=800
export QT_EGLFS_IMX6_NO_FB_MULTI_BUFFER=1
export QT_QPA_EGLFS_DEPTH=24
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=linuxfb:fb=/dev/fb0:size=800x480:mmSize=800x480

UBIFS

By default we create ubifs image for 0.5GB nand size. You can change the size by editing ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido/sources/meta-variscite-mx6/conf/machine/var-som-mx6.conf
and comment / uncomment the relevant section based on size.


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

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ sudo mkdir rootfs
$ sudo tar xvf build_x11/tmp/deploy/images/var-som-mx6/fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6.tar.bz2 -C rootfs/
$ sudo mkfs.ubifs -r rootfs/ -o fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6q4.ubifs -m 4096 -e 504KiB -c 7835
$ ubinize -o fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6q4.ubi -m 4096 -p 512KiB -s 4096 -O 4096 ubinize.cfg

$ cat ubinize.cfg 
[ubifs]
mode=ubi
image=fsl-image-qt5-var-som-mx6.ubifs
vol_id=0
vol_type=dynamic
vol_name=rootfs
vol_flags=autoresize

DDR size and Contiguous Memory Allocator

By default Freescale allocates 256MB of RAM to the Contiguous Memory allocator. This is for proper operation of the IPU VPU, X11 etc. On VAR-SOM-SOLO with 256MB DDR RAM size, it will cause a kernel freeze during boot. Adding cma=32MB to the bootargs parameters is required to fix.

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.

Update Yocto Fido i.MX6 Meta Variscite VAR-SOM-MX6 support

From time to time we will post updates to meta-variscite. This will include improve features and bug fix. You can track the history log in the previous page to see if such an update was posted. In such a case follow the instructions below to update your tree. 

$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido/sources/meta-variscite-mx6/
$ git fetch origin
$ git pull
Set your enviroment
$ cd ~/var-som-mx6-yocto-fido
$ . ./setup-environment build_x11
In order to update the kernel
$ bitbake -c cleanall linux-variscite
$ bitbake -c cleanall ti-compat-wireless-wl18xx
and build your image
$ bitbake fsl-image-qt5


Useful Bitbake commands

Bitbake Cheat Sheet

Useful bitbake commands

i.MX Yocto Project: ltib versus bitbake

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This page was last edited on 20 March 2016, at 16:36.

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