BeagleBone

From Gentoo Wiki
Jump to:navigation Jump to:search
Resources

Installing Gentoo in the BeagleBone is pretty simple if you're already a Gentoo user. You need to use an SD card, at least of 2 GB of size. If you are familiar with the Gentoo Linux installation process, there is not much different here.

Requirements

To be able to install Gentoo, you'll need the following:

  • An x86/amd64 based PC with Gentoo and an SD card reader on it.
  • A BeagleBone.
  • One SD card (2 GB is enough).
  • A network connection.

Preparation

Overview

Before we start the installation process, we need to get/build a kernel, bootloader and X-Loader for the BeagleBone.

The BeagleBone doesn't have a NAND/flash device, so the bootloader (U-Boot) needs to be located on the SD card, along with X-Loader and the kernel.

Emerging needed tools

For building the stuff needed to boot our BeagleBone, we need the following tools emerged on the host system where we're going to build them.

root #emerge --ask dev-vcs/git sys-devel/crossdev dev-embedded/u-boot-tools sys-fs/dosfstools

Build a crosscompiler

Build a crosscompiler:

root #crossdev -S armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi

Obtain and build U-Boot

Obtain U-Boot:

root #tar xjpf u-boot-2012.10-rc3.tar.bz2 && cd u-boot-*

Compile U-Boot:

root #make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- am335x_evm_config
root #make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi-

Obtain and build a kernel

For booting the BeagleBone we need a kernel. The vanilla kernel.org doesn't support the BeagleBone as of October 2012, for this reason we'll use a kernel provided by TI.

Obtain the kernel:

root #cd linux-am33x
root #git checkout -f v3.2-staging

Or use the following if you are only interested in the last revision of this branch:

root #git clone --depth 1 --branch v3.2-staging --single-branch git://arago-project.org/git/projects/linux-am33x.git

Obtain needed firmware:

Configure the kernel:

root #make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- am335x_evm_defconfig

Run menuconfig for enable ext4 support:

root #make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- menuconfig

Enable ext4 as built-in:

KERNEL 
File systems --->
   <*>The Extended 4 (ext4) filesystem

Enable devtmpfs support for newer systems:

KERNEL Enabling devtmpfs support
Device Drivers --->
  Generic Driver Options --->
    [*] Maintain a devtmpfs filesystem to mount at /dev
    [*]   Automount devtmpfs at /dev, after the kernel mounted the rootfs

The kernel includes CPU frequency scaling support, but by default is configured to use the userspace governor, that means that unless you have any CPU frequency scaling manager in the rootfs, the cpu will be stuck at 600MHz.

You can change the governor anytime you want, but if you are like me and prefer the ondemand governor set by default, which makes a CPU frequency scaling manager redundant, or if you prefer the performance governor which is like disabling CPU frequency scaling, you can choose the default governor in the following kernel config menu.

Set the default governor in menuconfig:

KERNEL 
Code Listing 3.8: Configuring the default governor in menuconfig
CPU Power Management --->
   CPU Frequency Scaling --->
      Default CPUFreq governor (userspace)  --->

Cross-compile the kernel (replace 9 in the command with an appropriate number of cores on the build computer):

root #make -j9 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- uImage

Depending on the gcc version used in your cross compiler, this might not work. The 3.2-staging kernel is not intended to work with gcc-5, but you can create a separate cross compiler with gcc-4. Look at the options in crossdev -h for information on how to specify this. To keep this running next to your existing cross compiler, you can call it armv7a-gcc4-linux-gnueabi for example and change the make command accordingly.

Also, when using gcc-4.9.4, you need one patch to prevent a build error:

root #wget "https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/patch/kernel/timeconst.pl?id=fab58c4dc8da9983c88357da7455955e1fa05c38" -O fix-timeconst-error.patch
root #git apply fix-timeconst-error.patch

Once it gets built we'll have a kernel image on arch/arm/boot/uImage.

SD card setup

Overview

OMAP-based systems need a special setup of the SD card to boot from it. For more information please check this link.

Formatting the SD card

The following script will format your SD card accordingly, creating two partitions. The first partition size is based on the size of the SD card itself, and it's formatted in vfat. The second partition is the free space left on the card after the first partition, and it's formatted in ext4.

Format the SD card:

Replace mmcblk0 in the command below with the name SD card device. When using a USB-based SD card reader, the card may show up as a /dev/sd* device, for example /dev/sdd.

root #bash mkcard.sh /dev/mmcblk0

Configure U-Boot

The default configuration of U-Boot differs a bit from our setup, we fix that by creating a file called uEnv.txt with the following contents:

FILE uEnv.txt
bootfile=uImage
loaduimage=run loaduimagefat; run mmcboot

Copy U-Boot, MLO, and the kernel to the SD card

Now we'll mount the first partition on the card and copy the needed files (the ones that we built before) to boot our BeagleBone.

root #mkdir /mnt/p1 ; mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/p1
root #cp uEnv.txt /mnt/p1
root #cp u-boot-2012.10-rc3/{MLO,u-boot.img} /mnt/p1
root #cp linux-am33x/arch/arm/boot/uImage /mnt/p1

Installing Gentoo

Overview

The installation on this device is a bit different, and therefore easy, as we can't install Gentoo on it by booting an installation environment. For installing Gentoo (and any other distro, really) you need to put the SD card on your PC and prepare there the minimal installation.

What we'll have to do to setup our installation is:

  1. Extract stage3 to the 2nd partition of the SD card
  2. Extract portage snapshot (required to emerge things and ntp(see below))
  3. Setup fstab
  4. Setup root password
  5. Configure hostname and networking (optional, but recommended)
  6. Enable SSH access (optional, but recommended)
  7. Enable serial console access (optional, but recommended)

Stages information

Here's some information about the stages.

  • Architecture: arm
  • Subarchitecture: armv7a_hardf
  • CHOST: armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi
  • Profile: default/linux/arm/10.0

We'll be using the new EABI, also called gnueabi. That is armel on Debian.

Therefore, we need an armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi stage3 for best performance, available under the releases/arm/autobuilds directory in your favorite mirror.

Optionally grab a Portage snapshot.

Extracting a stage3

Mount the second partition of the SD card and extract the stage3 you downloaded.

Mount the partition and extracting the stage3:

root #mkdir /mnt/p2
root #mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/p2
root #tar xjpf stage3-armv7a_hardfp-20121006.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/p2

Extract a Portage snapshot (optional)

Extract the snapshot:

root #tar xjpf portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/p2/usr

Setup fstab

Edit the /mnt/p2/etc/fstab file to look like this:

FILE /mnt/p2/etc/fstab
# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/mmcblk0p1		/boot		vfat		noauto,noatime	1 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2		/		ext4		noatime		0 1

If they exist, remove (or comment out) the following lines since this system does not have a swap partition, CD-ROM, or floppy:

FILE /mnt/p2/etc/fstab
/dev/SWAP		none		swap		sw		0 0
/dev/cdrom		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,ro	0 0
#/dev/fd0		/mnt/floppy	auto		noauto		0 0

Set the default root password

This is the most important part of the installation. As without the root password we won't be able to login!

For setting the password, we need to be able to run passwd. However that's not possible since our PC can't run ARM binaries. Therefore we need to modify the file that contains the passwords (/etc/shadow) inside the chroot, so we can set a default root password.

Generate a password:

root #openssl passwd -1

Open the shadow file:

root #nano -w /mnt/p2/etc/shadow

Replace the first line with the following line (where password is the output from the openssl command above):

FILE /mnt/p2/etc/shadow
root:password:14698:0:::::

Setup hostname and networking

Please read the network configuration chapter of the ARM handbook to configure the network.

Enabling SSH access (optional)

We can add sshd to the startup of our system so we can access our BeagleBone using ssh. Add sshd to the startup:

root #ln -sf /etc/init.d/sshd /mnt/p2/etc/runlevels/default

Enabling serial console access (optional)

By default the ttyS0 port is configured at 9600 bps. However, almost all of the ARM devices run the serial port at 115200 bps. Also, in the case of the BeagleBone, the port is ttyO0(that is a t-t-y-capitalO-zero) instead of the normal ttyS0. So this should be added to the /etc/inittab file. Replace 9600 with 115200 on the ttyS0 line, and replace ttyS0 with ttyO0.

root #nano -w /mnt/p2/etc/inittab
FILE /etc/inittab
s0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 115200 ttyO0 vt100

Finishing the installation

Let's unmount the SD card:

root #umount /mnt/p1 /mnt/p2

This is pretty much all of the installation. It is highly recommended readers of this guide read all the recommendations of the handbook.

Booting the system

Accessing the console (optional)

If you want to see the BeagleBone boot, connect an USB cable to the mini USB port (you should have it if you aren't powering it using an external PSU...) and load the ftdi_sio kernel module with the following command:

root #modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x0403 product=0xa6d0

In newer kernels, the ftdi_sio module requires a different interaction:

root #modprobe ftdi_sio
root #echo "0403 a6d0" > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id

New devices called ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 should show up on /dev. You should use ttyUSB1 with a terminal emulator like picocom or minicom configuring it with 115200bps 8N1

Once you have the card ready, put it into the Beaglebone... and you should be able to boot it.

After booting

Keeping the clock up to date

One of the problems of the BeagleBone is that it doesn't save the date because it doesn't have a battery for the clock.

After logging into our new Gentoo on Beaglebone installation, I'd recommend setting a date and emerging net-misc/ntp to keep the clock up-to-date. Also it's recommended to put both ntp-client and ntpd to boot on startup, so you get a proper date setup.

However, keep in mind that NTP requires a network connection and a NTP server being reachable, either on the local network or on the Internet.

root #emerge --ask net-misc/ntp
root #rc-update add ntpd default
root #rc-update add ntp-client default
root #service ntpd start
root #service ntp-client start

Special thanks

  • https://beagleboard.org/bone for providing me a Beaglebone to document and support Gentoo on it
  • Siarhei Siamashka (ssvb) for giving helpful hints

See also

External resources


This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: Raúl Porcel ( Raúl Porcel (armin76) )
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=BeagleBone&oldid=1292479"