Novena/Debian Wheezy Bootstrap

Debian Wheezy Debootstrap

A VERY ROUGH SET OF INSTRUCTIONS, RUN WITH CARE

This set of instructions assumes you have a functioning Novena board with Debian Wheezy. These instructions are primarily for people who want to re-create the firmware/base image. It relies on various bits and pieces of information on this wiki.

Prerequisites

• An existing Novena board running Debian Wheezy .
• Root access on your board, ideally have sudo access with no password.
• A 4gb microsd card.
• A reasonably fast network connection.
• Approximately 10gigs of free diskspace (more is probably better so you can cache things during testing/dev) - ideally get a SSD plugged into the board.
• Assumes 'you as a user' has tried building a linux kernel, u-boot etc...
  • i.e. we assume you have generated the kernel debian packages, uImage, uImage.dtb, the relevant boot loader and boot scripts.

Summary

• generate u-boot boot loader and boot script
  • See http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/DebianBuildProcess#Compile_the_u-boot_boot_script
  • See http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/DebianBuildProcess#Build_u-boot
• generate uImage and uImage.dtb file
  • See http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena/DebianBuildProcess#Build_Kernel
• generate debian packages for the kernel
  • See https://github.com/xobs/novena-linux/blob/3.15-rc1-novena/debian-build.sh
• generate a blockdevice or use a real sdcard
  • qemu-nbd was used in this example
  • first partition is a fat32 partition for the kernel and boot.scr
  • second partition is for the operating system
• debootstrap the second partition (via apt-cacher-ng to reduce network traffic)

Steps

Be logged in as yourself.

Install at least these things...

sudo apt-get install -y qemu-utils apt-cacher-ng build-essential less rsync lzop u-boot-tools git debhelper bc device-tree-compiler parted

Generate a new boot script...

mkimage -A arm -O linux -a 0 -e 0 -T script -C none -n "Boot script" -d boot.script boot.scr

Where boot.script contains this...

mmc dev 1
if fatload mmc 1 0x12000000 uImage
then
	fatload mmc 1 0x11ff0000 uImage.dtb
	setenv bootargs console=${console},${baudrate} root=${mmcroot}
	setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 earlyprintk root=/dev/mmcblk1p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 splash consoleblank=0
else
	mmc dev 0
	fatload mmc 0 0x12000000 uImage
	fatload mmc 0 0x11ff0000 uImage.dtb
	setenv bootargs console=ttymxc1,115200 earlyprintk root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait rootfstype=ext4 splash consoleblank=0
fi

fdt addr 0x11ff0000; run prep_gbit; run prep_pcie; run prep_senoko; run prep_es8328; run prep_retina; run prep_pixelqi; run prep_hdmi

bootm 0x12000000 - 0x11ff0000

Generate the boot loader

git clone https://github.com/sutajiokousagi/u-boot-imx6.git
cd u-boot-imx6 && make novena_config && make

Generate the kernel image

git clone https://github.com/xobs/novena-linux.git
cd novena-linux && git checkout v3.16-rc2-novena && make novena_defconfig && make uImage LOADADDR=10008000 -j 4 && make ARCH=arm imx6q-novena.dtb

Generate the kernel debian packages with this shell script (run this in the novena-linux repo on the right branch)

#!/bin/sh
make -j4 \
	LOADADDR=0x10008000 \
	LD=gold \
	KBUILD_DEBARCH=armhf \
	KBUILD_IMAGE=uImage \
	KBUILD_DTB=imx6q-novena.dtb \
	KDEB_PKGVERSION=1.2 \
	EMAIL="xobs@kosagi.com" \
	NAME="Sean Cross" \
	dtbs || exit 1
make -j4 \
	LOADADDR=0x10008000 \
	LD=gold \
	KBUILD_DEBARCH=armhf \
	KBUILD_IMAGE=uImage \
	KBUILD_DTB=imx6q-novena.dtb \
	KDEB_PKGVERSION=1.2 \
	EMAIL="xobs@kosagi.com" \
	NAME="Sean Cross" \
	deb-pkg

Here's is a run down of all the steps needed to generate a base image

# create image, then map it to a nbd, create and format partitions
qemu-img create novena.img 4G
# might need this
# sudo modprobe nbd max_part=16
sudo qemu-nbd --connect=/dev/nbd0 novena.img
sudo parted --script /dev/nbd0 -- mklabel msdos
# there might be alignment issues -- need to test
sudo parted --script /dev/nbd0 -- mkpart primary fat32 1 64
#sudo parted --script /dev/nbd0 -- mkpart primary fat32 0 64
sudo parted --script /dev/nbd0 -- mkpart primary ext4 64 -0
#sudo parted --script /dev/nbd0 -- set 1 boot on
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nbd0p2
sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/nbd0p1

# mount the ext4 partition
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p2 /mnt

# use local apt-cacher-ng proxy
sudo debootstrap --include=sudo,openssh-server,ntpdate,dosfstools,sysvinit,fbset,less,xserver-xorg-video-modesetting,task-xfce-desktop,hicolor-icon-theme,gnome-icon-theme,tango-icon-theme,i3-wm,i3status wheezy /mnt http://127.0.0.1:3142/ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/

# basic configuration

sudo mount --bind /dev/ /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
sudo chroot /mnt mount -t proc none /proc
sudo chroot /mnt mount -t sysfs none /sys

policy-rc.d contains this

#!/bin/sh
echo "All runlevel operations denied by policy" >&2
exit 101

sudo cp files/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d /mnt/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
echo root:kosagi | sudo chroot /mnt /usr/sbin/chpasswd

hostname contains this

novena

hosts contains this

127.0.0.1	localhost
::1		localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0		ip6-localnet
ff00::0		ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1		ip6-allnodes
ff02::2		ip6-allrouters

fstab contains this

/dev/mmcblk0p2       /                    ext4       noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro     0  1
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults                      0  0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5               0  0
tmpfs                /tmp                 tmpfs      defaults                      0  0
/dev/mmcblk0p1       /boot/bootloader     vfat       defaults                      2  2 

interfaces contains this

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

sources.list contains this

deb http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
deb-src http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main

deb http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main

deb http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main
deb-src http://ftp.ie.debian.org/debian wheezy-backports main

# install some basic things needed to kick of the networking etc...
sudo cp files/hostname /mnt/etc/hostname
sudo cp files/hosts /mnt/etc/hosts
sudo cp files/fstab /mnt/etc/fstab
sudo cp files/network/interfaces /mnt/etc/network/interfaces
sudo cp files/etc/apt/sources.list.d/kosagi.list /mnt/etc/apt/sources.list.d/kosagi.list
sudo cp files/etc/apt/sources.list /mnt/etc/apt/sources.list
sudo cp files/kosagi.gpg.key /mnt/root/kosagi.gpg.key
sudo chroot /mnt apt-key add /root/kosagi.gpg.key
sudo chroot /mnt apt-get update -y
sudo chroot /mnt env DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y imx-sdma-firmware
sudo chroot /mnt apt-get clean -y

sudo cp binaries/*.deb  /mnt/root
sudo chroot /mnt dpkg -i /root/linux-firmware-image-3.16.0-rc2-28074-g8b39edb_1.2_armhf.deb
sudo chroot /mnt dpkg -i /root/linux-image-3.16.0-rc2-28074-g8b39edb_1.2_armhf.deb
sudo chroot /mnt dpkg -i /root/linux-headers-3.16.0-rc2-28074-g8b39edb_1.2_armhf.deb

sudo rm /mnt/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/etc/X11
sudo cp files/etc/X11/xorg.conf /mnt/etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo cp files/etc/inittab /mnt/etc/inittab
sudo cp files/etc/default/locale /mnt/etc/default/locale

# setup boot loader
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot/bootloader 
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/boot/bootloader
sudo cp binaries/uImage /mnt/boot/bootloader/uImage
sudo cp binaries/imx6q-novena.dtb /mnt/boot/bootloader/uImage.dtb
sudo cp boot.scr  /mnt/boot/bootloader/boot.scr

sudo chroot /mnt umount /proc
sudo chroot /mnt umount /sys
sudo umount /mnt/dev/pts
sudo umount /mnt/dev

sudo umount /mnt/boot/bootloader
sudo umount /mnt
sudo dd if=binaries/u-boot.imx of=/dev/nbd0 seek=2 bs=512 conv=notrunc
sudo qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0

Once the above is done, you will be left with a novena.img file that you can dd to an sdcard.