Openembedded and a sutable distro

Here all the steps to build a valid root filesystem where I can deal with all my work since here!

I choose Openembedded as build system to build the linux distribution, first for curiosity (in so many place it is mentioned an so many people tell me about), last for no other known choices! (Sorry at anyone that fight to open the way for your own embedded distribuition build system)

Openembedded main page is here and following the Getting Started guide i had been able to create a valid Openembedded enviroment in my workstation:

Base dir
$ mkdir -p /media/dati/oe/stuff/build/conf
$ cd /media/dati/oe/stuff/

For BitBake
$ svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/bitbake/branches/bitbake-1.8/ bitbake

For Openembedded
$ git clone git://git.openembedded.net/openembedded

Next I created the BitBake configuration file locale.conf:

$ cd /media/dati/oe/stuff/
$ cp openembedded/conf/local.conf.sample build/conf/local.conf

Editing it for me it result: (without comments..):

TOPDIR = "/media/dati/oe"
DL_DIR = "${TOPDIR}/sources"

BBFILES = "${TOPDIR}/stuff/openembedded/recipes/*/*.bb"

BBMASK = ""

PREFERRED_PROVIDERS = "virtual/qte:qte virtual/libqpe:libqpe-opie"
PREFERRED_PROVIDERS += " virtual/libsdl:libsdl-x11"
PREFERRED_PROVIDERS += " virtual/${TARGET_PREFIX}gcc-initial:gcc-cross-initial"
PREFERRED_PROVIDERS += " virtual/${TARGET_PREFIX}gcc-intermediate:gcc-cross-intermediate"
PREFERRED_PROVIDERS += " virtual/${TARGET_PREFIX}gcc:gcc-cross"
PREFERRED_PROVIDERS += " virtual/${TARGET_PREFIX}g++:gcc-cross"

MACHINE = "armadillo500"

TARGET_OS = "linux"

DISTRO = "angstrom-2008.1"

GLIBC_GENERATE_LOCALES = "en_GB.UTF-8 it_DE.UTF-8"

IMAGE_FSTYPES = "ext2"

CACHE = "${TOPDIR}/cache"

BBINCLUDELOGS = "yes"

And next the patch to openembedded: 0001-Initial-Armadillo-500-support-for-OpenEmbedded.patch

Applying this the command:

$ cd /media/dati/oe/stuff/
$ bitbake helloworld-image

Produce at /media/dati/oe/tmp/deploy/glibc/images/armadillo500 the file Angstrom-helloworld-image-glibc-ipk-2009.X-test-20090506-armadillo500.rootfs.ext2
that mounted as loopback filesystem on /nfsarmadilloroot:

$ sudo mount Angstrom-helloworld-image-glibc-ipk-2009.X-test-20090506-armadillo500.rootfs.ext2 /nfsarmadilloroot -t ext2 -o loop

Work great as rootfilesystem!

That's all folks :)

Next is a console-image..
Openembedded take so much time building! Sure.. it build also so much software not needed.. nevermind I'm not here to penetrate in that build process. :P

Angsrom Login!!!

Yes YES YESSSSS!
I've got the Angstrom Login prompt on the VGA screen! Yes the problem suggested was true, new kernel, wrong version of glibc.
Next the entire process to have a working Angstrom helloworld-image :)

Revision Point.

Last post in this blog was weeks ago!
I've been far from internet for a while but also not far from my thesis!
What I worked out:

1. Ethernet support (SMSC 9118) with nfs root capability.
2. MMC/SD card device support (SDHC).

Since now I worked on Frame buffer support with discrete success (Logo displayed on the screen), but THE problem is not solved! THE problem is that with the latest kernel, the distro given from Atmark crashes in early init process! with no chances of debugging!
The only things that I know are the lists of files that the init process try to load from the nfs root before it crash without outputs.

I think it is a conflict between the new kernel and the precompiled C libraries stored in the root directory.
So now I'm working for building a compatible distro from Openembedded hoping this process is painless :p

Bye!