build Yocto system for Raspberry Pi under win10-x86

Preparation

1. Reference:
   • Building Our First Poky Image for the Raspberry Pi
   • Yocto Project official site
2. platform: Windows 10.
   • host machine: Windows 10, x86
   • target machine: Raspberry Pi3 B+, ARM

Set up development environment for host machine

1. Download Docker for cross-compilation environment

Concerning the host machine, naive Linux host is easier to start(See Quick Start Guide for Systems Developers). For Windows and Mac OS, we leverage docker to set up cross-compilation development environment(look at CROPS). This exmaple demonstrates solution for windows10.

Choose the right version of docker concerning your PC platform.

For Win10, we choose Docker CE Stable. Download docker and install it.

2. Configurate docker-machine and create poky container

See instructions and do the following steps.

2.1 Change default vm settings

• Run powershell as administrator and run the following commands.

• Remove the default docker-machine

  docker-machine rm default
  

• Re-create the default docker-machine

  Win10 has inner hyper-v vitual machine driver, so we don't need to use the virtualbox in the reference. Enable hyper-v and prepare hyper-v following this instructions.

  • Choose the number of cpus with --hyperv-cpu-count. For this example we'll use two.
  • Choose the amount of RAM: --hyperv-memory. This is also based on the host hardware. However, choose at least 4GB.
  • Choose the amount of disk space: --hyperv-disk-size. It is recommended that this be at least 50GB since building generates a lot of output. In this example we'll choose 50GB.
  • Create vm with new settings

  docker-machine create -d hyperv --hyperv-cpu-count=2 --hyperv-memory=4096 --hyperv-disk-size=50000 default
  

  • Restart docker
    Restart docker-machine to avoid some unexpected errors later on.

  docker-machine restart
  exit
  

  Use command docker-machine ls to list and check your settings.

2.2 Create the samba container

• Useful docker command:

  docker image ls // list all images
  docker container ls // list all running containers
  docker container ls --all // list all containers
  docker container stop [NAME or ID] // stop certain container
  docker container rm [NAME or ID] // remove certain container(container should be stopped first before removed)
  

See more in Docker tutorial.

• Create a volume. A volume is used to persistent data on the host machine.

  docker volume create --name myvolume
  docker run -it --rm -v myvolume:/workdir busybox chown -R 1000:1000 /workdir
  

The second command is executed to change the read-write permission of the /workdir.

• create container samba to monitor poky container.

  docker create -t -p 445:445 --name samba -v myvolume:/workdir crops/samba
  docker start samba
  

If you start samba succefully, run docker-machine ip to get ip(something like 192.168.99.100), and then to see the workdir open the file browser in windows (win+e) and type \\192.168.99.100\workdir.
If you fail to start samba and get error message like:

Error response from daemon: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint samba (43a4e1ec467d6f584d5799e7ed3b333bd2bcabc17f0086ec0851024b018620bc): Error starting userland proxy: Bind for 0.0.0.0:445: unexpected error Permission denied
Your local port 445 is likely occupied by other process. Simply change -p 445:445 to -p 446:445.

docker create -t -p 446:445 --name samba -v myvolume:/workdir crops/samba
docker start samba

2.3 Create a Poky container

Before using the poky container, make sure the samba container is running. Note that if you have started it in a previous terminal it will still be running. Run poky container as follows, note that we use the volume created above when specifying the workdir.

docker run --rm -it -v myvolume:/workdir crops/poky --workdir=/workdir

You will see a prompt that looks like

pokyuser@892e5d2574d6:/workdir$

Build Yocto for your raspberry pi

1. Go to Raspberry Pi Official site to check the board model number.

   Choose the model number for your certain hardware. For Example, we have a Raspberry Pi 3B+ board. Thus the hardware in raspberry pi is BCM2837B0. We select raspberrypi3 as the choice for MACHINE. See the conf file in meta-raspberrypi/conf/machine for details. Remenber this machine type, later you will need to fill it in the local.conf file.

   Supported machine:

   • raspberrypi (BCM2835)
   • raspberrypi0 (BCM2835)
   • raspberrypi0-wifi (BCM2835)
   • raspberrypi2 (BCM2836 or BCM2837 v1.2+)
   • raspberrypi3 (BCM2837)
   • raspberrypi3-64 (64 bit kernel & userspace)
   • raspberrypi-cm (dummy alias for raspberrypi) (BCM2835)
   • raspberrypi-cm3 (dummy alias for raspberrypi2) (BCM2837)

   Note: The raspberrypi3 machines include support for Raspberry Pi 3B+.

   The example in this article use Yocto Project version 2.6 and poky version 2.6

2. Download the Poky metadata

   git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/poky (branch master)
   

3. Download the Raspberry Pi BSP and dependencies metadata as layers

   cd poky
   git clone git://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-raspberrypi
   

   Poky is just a reference minimal system for us to start, we can add layers to customize our linux system specific to our hardware. Here we have a raspberry pi board. So we need the official BSP: meta-raspberrypi layer. What's more, according to Yocto: meta-raspberrypi, there are other dependencies we need:

   • URI: git://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
     • layers: meta-oe, meta-multimedia, meta-networking, meta-python
     • branch: master
     • revision: HEAD

   git clone git://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
   

   Now we have /meta-raspberrypi and /meta-openembedded folders under /poky directory.

4. The oe-init-build-env script

   The Poky directory contains a script named oe-init-build-env. This is a script for the configuration/initialization of the build environment. It is not intended to be executed but must be "sourced". Its work, among others, is to initialize a certain number of environment variables and place yourself in the build directory’s designated argument. The script must be run as shown here:

   source oe-init-build-env [build-directory]
   

   Here, build-directory is an optional parameter for the name of the directory where the environment is set (for example, we can use several build directories in a single Poky source tree); in case it is not given, it defaults to build. The build-directory folder is the place where we perform the builds. But, in order to standardize the steps, we will use the following command throughout to initialize our environment:

   $ source oe-init-build-env rpi-build
   
   ### Shell environment set up for builds. ###
   
   You can now run 'bitbake '
   Common targets are:
   core-image-minimal
   core-image-sato
   meta-toolchain
   adt-installer
   meta-ide-support
   You can also run generated qemu images with a command like 'runqemu qemux86'
   

   When we initialize a build environment, it creates a directory (the conf directory) inside rpi-build. This folder contains two important files:

   • local.conf: It contains parameters to configure BitBake behavior.
   • bblayers.conf: It lists the different layers that BitBake takes into account in its implementation. This list is assigned to the BBLAYERS variable.

5. Editing the local.conf file

   Search in the /rpi-build/conf/local.conf file. Find the MACHINE ??= line and change it to :

   MACHINE ??= "raspberrypi3"
   

   Here, the "raspberrypi3" is the machine type we found out before according to our board model number.

6. Editing the bblayers.conf file

   Add the meta-raspberrypi layer and meta-oe, meta-multimedia, meta-networking, meta-python dependences layers to the bblayers.conf file. The file should look like this:

   # POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION is increased each time build/conf/bblayers.conf
   # changes incompatibly
   POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION = "2"
   BBPATH = "${TOPDIR}"
   
   BBFILES ?= ""
   
   BBLAYERS ?= " \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-poky \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-raspberrypi \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-openembedded/meta-oe \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-openembedded/meta-multimedia \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-openembedded/meta-networking \
   /workdir/dilin/poky/meta-openembedded/meta-python \
   "
   

7. Building the Poky image

   • Choosing the image

   At this stage, we will have to look at the available images as to whether they are compatible with our platform (.bb files).
   Poky provides several predesigned image recipes that we can use to build our own binary image. We can check the list of available images by running the following command from the poky directory:

   $ ls meta*/recipes*/images/*.bb
   

   We want to build some raspberrypi-specific image. There are there of them: rpi-test-image, rpi-hwup-image and rpi-basic-image. According to meta-raspberrypi docs, the latter two images have been deprecated, so we build the rpi-test-image image. It is based on core-image-base which includes most of the packages in this layer and some media samples.

   • Running BitBake
     Under our build directory rpi-build, run the following command:

   pokyuser@49065a978b08:/workdir/poky/rpi-build$ bitbake rpi-test-image
   Loading cache: 100% |#########################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:00
   Loaded 3164 entries from dependency cache.
   NOTE: Resolving any missing task queue dependencies
   
   Build Configuration:
   BB_VERSION           = "1.40.0"
   BUILD_SYS            = "x86_64-linux"
   NATIVELSBSTRING      = "universal"
   TARGET_SYS           = "arm-poky-linux-gnueabi"
   MACHINE              = "raspberrypi3"
   DISTRO               = "poky"
   DISTRO_VERSION       = "2.6+snapshot-20181203"
   TUNE_FEATURES        = "arm armv7ve vfp thumb neon vfpv4 callconvention-hard cortexa7"
   TARGET_FPU           = "hard"
   meta
   meta-poky
   meta-yocto-bsp       = "master:7faf6a00ba55db5cb5f2c21a72d09df8d784e9e8"
   meta-raspberrypi     = "master:c8a05f2fcf17ca2556f8a56086ea36da2e777d0f"
   meta-oe
   meta-multimedia
   meta-networking
   meta-python          = "master:ebc7b9e20ac22f6f2ad373621917f53e8a9af81c"
   
   Initialising tasks: 100% |####################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:03
   Sstate summary: Wanted 187 Found 186 Missed 1 Current 1175 (99% match, 99% complete)
   NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
   NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
   NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 4006 tasks of which 4006 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.
   

   If encountered with the below error message, add a line LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial" in rpi-build/conf/local.conf file.

   ERROR: Nothing PROVIDES 'libav' (but /workdir/poky/meta-raspberrypi/recipes-multimedia/omxplayer/omxplayer_git.bb DEPENDS on or otherwise requires it)ffmpeg PROVIDES libav but was skipped: because it has a restricted license 'commercial'. Which is not whitelisted in LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST

   The first bitbake can take quite a long time. Elapsed time varies concerning the layers you add. For reference, it takes 4h for the first bitbake of core-image-minimal image. And over 8h to bitbake rpi-test-image image.

Flash image to sdcard for raspberry pi

1. Copy image from docker to your PC

   After hours of baking, we can rejoice with the result and the creation of the system image for our target:

   $ ls rpi-build/tmp/deploy/images/raspberrypi3/*sdimg
   rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3-20181203014212.rootfs.rpi-sdimg  rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3.rpi-sdimg
   

   rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3-20181203014212.rootfs.rpi-sdimg can be used with Win32DiskImager in Windows, while in Linux you can use the dd command with the rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3.rpi-sdimg directly to flash image to SD card.

   Open another powershell terminal and run:

   docker cp 6446fd34ba5e:/workdir/poky/rpi-build/tmp/deploy/images/raspberrypi3/rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3-20181203014212.rootfs.rpi-sdimg [directory in your windows] // Replace 6446fd34ba5e with your samba container ID
   

2. Flash image to SD card

   See Raspberry pi doc.

• Format SD card first

  Plug in your SD card and you can see two disk device concerning your SD card. One is named boot, another is USB drive. Download SD Format and format the boot device.

  Format SD-card before flashing. Or you propabably will get a "Error 5 access denied error" when trying to write an image to your SD-card.

• Flash image to SD card

  Download Win32DiskImager(See raspberry pi instructions). From Win32DiskImager choose the rpi-test-image-raspberrypi3-20181203014212.rootfs.rpi-sdimg from the directory you have just saved it, and choose the boot disk device.
  Carefully check you choose the right device and click write.

3. After you successfully start the system on raspberry pi, you see:

   raspberrypi3 login:
   

   Input root and you can use the system now.

   HURRAY!!!

Troubleshooting

• If you cannot bind local 445 port to samba's 445 port, you can use the below command to validate everything goes well in pocky. Open another powershell terminal as administrator and run the below docker command to help debug.

PS C:\windows\system32> docker exect -it [your samba container ID] bash // go into samba container
root@a6fd96ce2b55:# cd workdir/

• When BitBake fails for some package uninstalled, open another powershell terminal as administrator and run the below docker command to help debug.

PS C:\windows\system32> docker exec -it -u 0 [your poky container ID] bash
root@a6fd96ce2b55:# sudo apt-get install [your needed package name]

• Open another powershell terminal as administrator and run the below docker command to check image's history actions.

docker history crops/poky

• If you encounter BitBake error with messages showed below, delete the /rpi-build/tmp folder to free some space. Run command du -sh ./tmp under /rpi-build directory to see the size of tmp folder. Or you can open another powershell terminal as administrator and run the following command to check the size of the build directory.

docker exec -it samba bash
cd workdir/poky/rpi-build
du-h --max-depth=1

• If you plug in your sd-card which has been succefully wrote the rpi-test-image, and the system boots continuously prints out:

init: id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Go back and add ENABLE_UART = "1" in local.conf. Re-bake your image and the problem can be solved.