[lug] This upcoming Monday: Building your own custom Linux image for a development board

[Paul Walmsley]

Some folks on this list might be interested.  This Monday we'll do a 
workshop on building a custom Linux image -- kernel plus rootfs -- for 
some of the common Linux development boards out there:

http://www.meetup.com/SolidStateDepot/events/226426364/

We'll focus on ARM, but the basic techniques should work for many non-ARM 
boards out there too.


- Paul




Monday, November 2, 2015

7:00 PM
Solid State Depot

1965 33rd Street, UNIT B, Boulder, CO (edit map)

So you've got an ARM development board, and maybe you've got an idea for a 
cool device that you'd like to build with it. But you're stuck using 
someone else's kernel or someone else's root filesystem, and you'd like to 
build your own that's customized to your needs. Or maybe you're happy with 
your current dev board environment, and you're just curious about how the 
"sausage is made."

Does that sound like you? If so, then you should definitely come to this 
workshop.

We'll cover:

- How to install a pre-compiled cross-toolchain, so you can compile on 
your existing x86 Linux box and target an ARM device
- How to set up an SD card with your kernel, U-boot bootloader, and rootfs
- How to configure, build and install a mainline kernel that can boot on 
your device
- How to build and install a Debian-based minimal root filesystem using 
debootstrap

We'll use a Beaglebone Black or a Beaglebone Green as our development 
platform. But many of the techniques that we'll demonstrate will work on 
other popular development boards out there.

We encourage you to bring a Beaglebone, a laptop running Linux, and an SD 
card so you can join in the fun.

Prerequisites:
- You should have Linux installed on your development machine
- You should have installed the basic kernel development tools. On 
Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, you'd do this with "sudo apt-get install 
build-essential"
- You should have downloaded a copy of the mainline Linux kernel, with 
"git clone 
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git".
- Since our Hackerspace network connection is not very fast, we recommend 
that you download a copy of the Linaro gcc toolchain from 
"https://releases.linaro.org/components/toolchain/binaries/latest-5.1/arm-linux-gnueabihf/gcc-linaro-5.1-2015.08-x86_64_arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.xz"

Workshop cost: FREE for Solid State Depot Members, or $10-$25 (sliding 
scale) for non-members. All workshop proceeds go to support Solid State 
Depot.

Instructor: Paul Walmsley