BuildRoot and OCG

[Tim Scott]

Thought I’d post this here in case anyone in the future wants to do something similar: It’s possible to build a kernel and file system image for use on the OCG using the buildroot build tool. I’m successfully running a build based on buildroot 2014.02 with the MT100EOCG-H5-GP board.

Why buildroot vs bitbake? I’m personally more familiar with buildroot and didn’t want to have to learn the ins-and-outs of bitbake. I also find the ncurses menus of buildroot easier to deal with than bitbake recipes.

Anyhow, here are the steps for those that are interested:

1) Clone the buildroot repo. Go to the buildroot root folder.

2) “make at91sam9g20dfc_defconfig” to configure the AT91SAM9G20 defaults.

3) Create the dir board/multitech/mt100eocg/patches/linux

4) Get a copy of the CoreCDP 2.2.2 and extract/copy the following files to the dir created in the previous step:
linux-2.6.32.3-at25.patch
linux-2.6.32.3-atmel_serial_disable_hwhs.patch
linux-2.6.32.3-atmel_spi.patch
linux-2.6.32.3-option-telit.patch
linux-2.6.35.14-at91-gpio-pullup.patch
linux-2.6.35.14-mach-at91-mt100eocg.patch
linux-2.6.35.14-option-zte.patch
linux-2.6.35-sierra-1.7.40.patch
patch-2.6.35.14.bz2

6) “make menuconfig”. Change Linux kernel version to 2.6.35. Define Custom Kernel Patches to the dir created above.

7) “make”. This first time build will also include the toolchain so it might take a while to complete. Subsequent builds shouldn’t take nearly as long.

8) Deploy your kernel and file system to the target. I’m doing this using NFS support which makes development really quick and easy.

All of this, of course, is unsupported by MultiTech. Just another option for those that are daring. Doing this, I have been able to easily add tools and tweak kernel options for my system. This includes running Python 2.7.3 vs the 2.6.6 that is part of CoreCDP Python build. One of my deployed packages refused to install using Python 2.6.6, but had no issues with 2.7.3. Go figure.

Cheers,
–tim

[Jesse Gilles]

Thanks for sharing!

Jesse

[lewis wight]

@Tim Scott, did everything else on your device still work, like the gps and GPIO’s?

[Tim Scott]

I haven’t messed with the GPIOs so I haven’t verified them. GPS works fine — either through Minicom or the recompilation of Venus GPS.

–tim

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