[clug] ARM devices with complete upstream support

Eyal Lebedinsky eyal at eyal.emu.id.au
Fri Oct 28 10:19:39 UTC 2016


On 10/28/16 17:43, Chris Smart wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 02:38:33PM +1100, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
>> On 10/27/16 21:37, Chris Smart wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 12:09:47PM +1100, Chris Smart wrote:
>>>> Every week there's a new cute little ARM device, but almost all use some
>>>> ancient fork of the Linux kernel and U-Boot, rendering them less than
>>>> ideal (well useless, IMO).
>>>>
>>>
>>> And if anyone's interested on how to build your upstream kernel and U-Boot
>>> for Raspberry Pi 2/3, I've just put that on my blog too.
>>>
>>> <https://blog.christophersmart.com/2016/10/27/building-and-booting-upstream-linux-and-u-boot-for-raspberry-pi-23-arm-boards/>
>>
>> Thanks  Chris,
>>
>> I thought I should give it a test for my raspi3. I followed the instructions verbatim but it failed (see below).
>> I am on f24.
>>
>> Some nitpicking though:
>>
>> "Assuming your card is at /dev/sdx (replace as necessary, check dmesg after plugging it in if you’re not sure)"
>>  I suggest you remove the "if...". Always check, the cost of a mistake can be catastrophic.
>>
>> "sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt" should say "sdx1".
>>
>
> Thanks, I'll fix that.
>
>> cheers
>>
>>> -c
>>
>> $ CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnu- make rpi_3_defconfig
>
>
> That's my fault - you should be using rpi_3_32b_defconfig as the
> rpi_3_defconfig is 64bit (which I tried to say to avoid).
>
> Can you try that and see how you go? I'll update the blog post.
>
> Cheers,
> -c
>

Moving on...

$ sudo mkimage -A arm -T ramdisk -C none -n uInitrd -d initramfs-arm.cpio /mnt/uInitrd
sudo: mkimage: command not found

OK, so we need to add one more package
	$ sudo dnf install uboot-tools

The rest is OK.

Booting the raspi3 I see the boot messages on HDMI then a blank screen.
However, the serial line is now alive
BTW, on 'reboot' I do see the boot messages scroll fast on the serial console
before the login prompt.

	arm login: root
	Jan  1 00:01:39 login[76]: root login on 'ttyAMA0'
	# uname -a
	Linux arm 4.8.4 #1 Fri Oct 28 20:41:49 AEDT 2016 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

	# free -m
	             total         used         free       shared      buffers
	Mem:           750           14          736            0            0
	-/+ buffers:                 14          736
	Swap:            0            0            0

So something worked... Would still be nice to have a text console on HDMI though.
Local pings work too.

Next, to be of use, we need to install/configure a small distro on the second partition.
But this was a good refresher on the build and setup.

A final BTW: 'halt' does not fully shut the system down. While nothing is visible, the power
meter indicates a rather busy system. Other distros drop to a low power mode, but we probably
do not have power management.

Thanks Chris

--
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)



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