Shared Embedded Linux Distribution

This page describes the CE Workgroup "Shared Embedded Linux Distribution" project

• This is a project to use Debian packages with the Yocto Project
  • Goal is to share the work of maintaining long-term support for an embedded distribution, by leveraging the work of the Debian project
• See "Poky meets Debian: Understanding How to Make an Embedded Linux by Using an Existing Distribution's Source Code" talk at ELC 2015 by Yoshitake Kobayashi
• See "Meta-debian handout" which was available at LinuxCon Japan 2015 CE Workgroup booth

Rationale

The meta-debian is a set of recipes (metadata) for the poky build system, which allows cross-building Linux images using Debian source packages. By enabling meta-debian, poky fetches required sources from Debian source repository and LTSI kernel repository.meta-debian is independent of OpenEmbedded-core recipes, so OE-Core recipes are still available after meta-debian is enabled. meta-debian is mainly intended to be used for embedded products which needs long-term support.

The purpose is to provide the following things

• Fully customizable embedded Linux based on existed distro
• Wide embedded CPU support
• Stability and long-term support

The meta-debian recipes follow Debian build rules by default, but sometimes customize them for embedded systems if necessary (e.g. remove dependencies). Also they re-use essential patches from OE-Core to support cross-building

How to use

Setup repositories

$ git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky.git
$ cd poky
$ git checkout daisy
$ git clone https://github.com/meta-debian/meta-debian.git
$ cd meta-debian
$ git checkout daisy

Please don't forget to install essential packages into your host system before you bitbake something. See Yocto Project's web site for this information [1]

Setup build directory

$ export TEMPLATECONF=meta-debian/conf
$ source ./poky/oe-init-build-env

You can change the target machine by setting MACHINE variable in local.conf to one of the following machines.

• qemux86, qemux86-64, qemuarm, qemuppc

Bitbake kernel and tiny rootfs

$ bitbake core-image-minimal

Run the build image on Qemu

Please run the following commands after bitbake core-image-minimal finishes.

(qemux86)
$ runqemu qemux86 nographic bootparams="init=/init root=/dev/sda"

(qemux86-64)
$ runqemu qemux86-64 nographic bootparams="init=/init root=/dev/sda"

(qemuarm)
$ runqemu qemuarm nographic bootparams="init=/init console=ttyAMA0"

(qemuppc)
$ runqemu qemuppc nographic bootparams="init=/init"

The shell prompt appears automatically after system boots without login. "init=/init" means that kernel uses tiny-init script as the init process instead of busybox /sbin/init.

Resources

Download

• https://github.com/meta-debian/

Mailing list

• meta-debian@googlegroups.com
• Subscription
  • meta-debian+subscribe@googlegroups.com
  • https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/meta-debian/join

Presentations

• "Poky meets Debian: Understanding How to Make an Embedded Linux by Using an Existing Distribution's Source Code" talk at ELC 2015 by Yoshitake Kobayashi
• "meta-debian: Extending Yocto Project's Poky for building Debian-based embedded system" talk at LinuxCon Japan 2015 by Kazuhiro Hayashi