EBC Exercise 08a Cross-Compiling

This class is about developing software for embedded Linux. The eLinux site is a good source for embedded Linux in general. There are many ongoing embedded efforts going on many platforms. Poke around the site a while to get a feel for what's happening.

We are going to use the Ångström Distribution. It's available many platforms. Look around the site, you may recognize some of them.

Finding the Kernel to copy it
Once your compile has finished, where is uImage? One way to find it is

$ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe $ find. -name "*uImage*" You'll find several files with uImage in the name. The one you want is

$ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_2008 $ ls

Here you'll see several directories here. If you  you will find the source code. We are going to go this way. $ cd deploy/glibc

Here you will find some more directories worth exploring. What do you find in ? Finally $ cd images/beagleboard Now you have found uImage. Load away.

Compile via make
When you use bitbake it sets up all the paths to use the correct cross compilers. You can also build the kernel or u-boot by using make if you set the paths yourself. Here's what you need to do. Put the following in a file, call it ~/BeagleBoard/oe/crossCompileEnv.sh. Make sure the path is correct for your system. PATH=~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_2008_1/sysroots/i686-linux/usr/armv7a/bin:$PATH # add cross tools to your path export ARCH=arm export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi- Note from Brian: On my machine I had to add ~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_2008_1/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/armv7a/bin to $PATH

Then source the file and cd to the kernel directory and try a make. $ source ~/BeagleBoard/oe/crossCompileEnv.sh $ cd ~/BeagleBoard/oe/build/tmp-angstrom_2008_1/work/beagleboard-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/linux-omap-psp-2.6.32-r88+gitra6bad4464f985fdd3bed72e1b82dcbfc004d7869/git $ make xconfig To make the kernel and u-boot run $ make uImage $ make u-boot Where do these put the new uImage? It's not where bitbake puts them. Here's how I found them. $ find. -name uImage

If you would prefer to maintain your own kernel source tree outside of OE, see these directions: BeagleBoardLinuxKernel Alternatively it is possible to run the official omap branch of the linux kernel. Take a peek at this page: BeagleBoard.