Using vendo kernel with Yocto

Using vendo kernel with Yocto

[João Henrique Freitas]

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Hello,

I have this situation:

My vendor device provides a kernel (2.6.22.19) with a patch to its device.
The device is a arm920t. And the vendor is Mindspeed.

I want to use Yocto to build the kernel and userland. In the past the
vendor provided a very old debian-like userland.

I am trying the following:

- create a recipe to build the kernel 2.6.22.19 with patch to the device
supplied by vendor
- build a image using core-image-minimal only to boot the device
- I think that linux-libc-headers should be 2.6.22.19, but I am trying with
linux-libc-headers-yocto
- the device boots with kernel compiled with Yocto but I have some sort of
problems with boot scripts. I am investigating.

Questions:

With Yocto (1.2M3), I can use a kernel 2.6.22.19 with userland provide by
Yocto project?

What is the minimal version of the kernel supported by Yocto?

I have other way to choice like port the vendor patch to a newer kernel.
But I prefer trying these way for now.

Thanks.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
João Henrique Freitas - joaohf_at_gmail.com
Campinas-SP-Brasil
BSD051283
LPI 1
http://www.joaohfreitas.eti.br

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Re: Using vendo kernel with Yocto

[Paul Eggleton]

On Wednesday 04 April 2012 19:05:05 João Henrique Freitas wrote:
> My vendor device provides a kernel (2.6.22.19) with a patch to its device.
> The device is a arm920t. And the vendor is Mindspeed.
> 
> I want to use Yocto to build the kernel and userland. In the past the
> vendor provided a very old debian-like userland.
> 
> I am trying the following:
> 
> - create a recipe to build the kernel 2.6.22.19 with patch to the device
> supplied by vendor
> - build a image using core-image-minimal only to boot the device
> - I think that linux-libc-headers should be 2.6.22.19, but I am trying with
> linux-libc-headers-yocto
> - the device boots with kernel compiled with Yocto but I have some sort of
> problems with boot scripts. I am investigating.
> 
> Questions:
> 
> With Yocto (1.2M3), I can use a kernel 2.6.22.19 with userland provide by
> Yocto project?
> 
> What is the minimal version of the kernel supported by Yocto?

That's a tough question, I'm not sure many people have experimented to find the 
oldest kernel that will work. 

However, for one of my hobby projects I have been trying to get an iPAQ h2200 
(currently stuck with the 2.6.21-hh kernel) booting with a rootfs produced 
using Poky. The first problem is that the current version of udev that we have, 
164, requires version 2.6.27 or later of the kernel, so you will need to 
provide an older udev. I've been testing with udev 092, but I still hit 
problems on boot - if I disable the initscript that calls "ifup -a" it boots 
successfully, but with it the boot process hangs, even though there are no 
network interfaces other than lo and if I run "ifup -a" after booting then it 
works fine. That was the state a few weeks ago and I haven't done any further 
work on it since then.

I guess what you can take from the above is it's almost certainly possible to 
work with a kernel as old as 2.6.2x, however you will need to downgrade udev 
(most easily by just bringing across udev recipes from OE Classic) and 
possibly other components, and you may still need to do additional 
troubleshooting.

Have you contacted the vendor to see if they can provide an updated patch?

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre

Re: Using vendo kernel with Yocto

[João Henrique Freitas]

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Hi Paul,


> However, for one of my hobby projects I have been trying to get an iPAQ
> h2200
> (currently stuck with the 2.6.21-hh kernel) booting with a rootfs produced
> using Poky. The first problem is that the current version of udev that we
> have,
> 164, requires version 2.6.27 or later of the kernel, so you will need to
> provide an older udev. I've been testing with udev 092, but I still hit
> problems on boot


I disabled the device manage with:

VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager = ""


> - if I disable the initscript that calls "ifup -a" it boots
> successfully, but with it the boot process hangs, even though there are no
> network interfaces other than lo and if I run "ifup -a" after booting then
> it
> works fine. That was the state a few weeks ago and I haven't done any
> further
> work on it since then.
>
>
I have the same behaviour. But after the boot, ifup -a freeze. This is the
strace:

open("/var/run/ifstate", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=6, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0x40003000
read(3, "lo=lo\n", 4096)                = 6
read(3, "", 4096)                       = 0
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0x40003000, 4096)                = 0
vfork()                                 = 768
wait4(768,

If I remore the 'auto' from /etc/network/interfaces, ifup didn't freeze but
no ethx was configured.



> I guess what you can take from the above is it's almost certainly possible
> to
> work with a kernel as old as 2.6.2x, however you will need to downgrade
> udev
> (most easily by just bringing across udev recipes from OE Classic) and
> possibly other components, and you may still need to do additional
> troubleshooting.
>
>
I will try udev from OE Classic or port the Mindspeed patchs to kernel
2.6.27.


> Have you contacted the vendor to see if they can provide an updated patch?
>
>
Yes, I contacted they. They said that the kernel is 2.6.22.19 and did not
have plans to upgrade it.


Thanks.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
João Henrique Freitas - joaohf_at_gmail.com
Campinas-SP-Brasil
BSD051283
LPI 1
http://www.joaohfreitas.eti.br

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Re: Using vendo kernel with Yocto

[João Henrique Freitas]

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Hello, just a report

As my vendor never will release patch to a recent kernel and our
applications needs some recent fetures found in a recent kernel. I decided
to make the patchs by myself.

I missed one week reading datasheet, git log, studying the old
implementation made by Mindspeed  and so on.

Now the kernel 3.4.18 boot and runs in our board using yocto 1.3. Of course
I have learned a lot of things.

Maybe some adjusts will be need to do. However I am very happy to track
Yocto project with Mindspeed hardware. This is going to speedup the release
cicles and  tools of our products.

Thanks.




>
>
>> Have you contacted the vendor to see if they can provide an updated patch?
>>
>>
> Yes, I contacted they. They said that the kernel is 2.6.22.19 and did not
> have plans to upgrade it.
>
>
>
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
João Henrique Freitas - joaohf_at_gmail.com
Campinas-SP-Brasil
BSD051283
LPI 1
http://www.joaohfreitas.eti.br

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Re: Using vendo kernel with Yocto

[Paul Eggleton]

On Friday 16 November 2012 18:25:59 you wrote:
> Hello, just a report
> 
> As my vendor never will release patch to a recent kernel and our
> applications needs some recent fetures found in a recent kernel. I decided
> to make the patchs by myself.
> 
> I missed one week reading datasheet, git log, studying the old
> implementation made by Mindspeed  and so on.
> 
> Now the kernel 3.4.18 boot and runs in our board using yocto 1.3. Of course
> I have learned a lot of things.
> 
> Maybe some adjusts will be need to do. However I am very happy to track
> Yocto project with Mindspeed hardware. This is going to speedup the release
> cicles and  tools of our products.

Great to hear! Please let us know if you have any other feedback or issues.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre