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Build Image using Yocto Project for Beaglebone Black.md

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Build Image using Yocto Project for Beaglebone Black.md

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Build Custom Linux Image for BeagleBone Black using Yocto Project

Overview

BeagleBone Black is a low-cost, ARM Cortex-A8-based development board.
It provides the flexibility to boot from either an SD card or the onboard eMMC.

The Yocto Project officially supports BeagleBone Black and offers a minimal bootable BSP (Board Support Package).
This guide explains how to build a custom Linux image for BeagleBone Black using the Yocto Project.

🧰 Prerequisites

Before starting, prepare your host system for Yocto Project development.

Host Requirements

  • OS: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (or newer)
  • Disk Space: Minimum 50 GB free
  • Internet Connection: Required to download build dependencies and source packages

Install Required Packages

Run the following command on your Ubuntu host

Install the below required package on your host machine

$ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib
build-essential chrpath socat cpio python python3 python3-pip
python3-pexpect xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping libsdl1.2-dev xterm

Download Poky

Poky is the Yocto reference distribution.

#Clone the Poky repository $ git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky

Setup build environment

Run the "oe-init-build-env" script with the below command from the poky directory and it will auto-create the build directory. Now your current working directory would be the build directory.

Setup the environment

$ source oe-init-build-env

Set machine name in local.conf

We are building the image for the beaglebone black board so you need to set the machine name in conf/local.conf

  • local.conf is auto-generated inside build/conf location.
  • This file is used for the user-based configuration.

#Open local.conf file $ vim conf/local.conf

#For Beaglebone, machine variable should be beaglebone-yocto MACHINE ??= “beaglebone-yocto”

Start bitbake to build the image

Bitbake is a task executor in the Yocto Project.

  • core-minimal-image recipe provides the minimal bootable image for the beaglebone black.
  • Now we are ready to lunch bitbake (Yocto build engine) to create the image. it takes several hours to complete the build also depends on your internet speed.
  • Once the build is completed successfully, you will get the image, root file system, and device tree file at the build/tmp/deploy/images/beaglebone-yocto/ directory.

Run bitbake

$ bitbake core-minimal-image

Create SD card Partition to boot the board

Create the partition in the SD card and copy the generated file in those partitions.

You can use GParted to create the partition.

  1. Create the first partition with the following details.
  • Name of the partition - BOOT
  • Size - 150 MB.
  • Flag - Set the boot flag
  • Type - FAT32
  1. Create 2nd partition with the below details.
  • Name of the partition - ROOT.
  • Size - greater than 1024 MB or remaining space of SD card.
  • Type- ext4

Copy generated image in SD card partition

Make sure your SD card is mounted on the host pc and you can access both SD card partitions.

#copy files from build/tmp/deploy/images/beaglebone-yocto/ to SD card boot and root partition. $ cp MLO-beaglebone-yocto /media/tutorialadda/BOOT/ $ cp u-boot.img /media/tutorialadda/BOOT/ $ sudo tar -xvf core-image-minimal-beaglebone-yocto.tar.bz2 /media/tutorialadda/ROOT/

Booting

Follow the below steps and boot the board with your Custom Linux image.

  • Insert SD card into beaglebone black card slot.
  • Connect the serial cable to monitor bootup logs and login to beaglebone black.
  • Press the S2 button while connecting power to beagle bone.

You will get the bootup log on the serial console. Poky (Yocto Project Reference Distro) 2.6.4 beaglebone /dev/ttyUSB0 beaglebone login: root root@beaglebone:~#