IGEP firmware Yocto

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Introduction

The IGEP Firmware could be built from scratch using a tool from the Yocto Project called Poky. The Poky build system allows developers to create their own complete Linux Distribution for their embedded systems.

The firmware that runs on every IGEP Technology devices is created in the hope to introduce you quickly to the IGEP Technology. The IGEP Firmware provides a preconfigured Linux system allowing communicating and experiencing easily with IGEP devices.

The image is built using the GNOME Mobile software stack, providing a well defined user experience. The user interface environment used is SATO, it is designed to work well with screens at very high DPI and restricted size. It is coded with focus on efficiency and speed so that it works smoothly on hand- held and other embedded hardware.

If you need to custom more your Linux OS, for example: editing, adding or removing packages, please read this article.

Features

Software included:

GNU/Linux system

  • Linux kernel.
  • Root filesystem (initscripts, X11-based, EXT3, JFFS2, UBIFS, VFAT, NTFS, NFS...)
  • Drivers (USB,SPI,I2C,CAN,Ethernet,GPRS,...)
  • Network protocols (TCP/IP, UDP/IP, ARP, ICMP, SNMP, TFTP, TELNET, DHCP,BOOTP, SSH-SSL, HTTP, HTTP-SSL, NAT, NTP, PPP,...)
  • RPM package system.

GNOME Mobile software stack

  • GTK toolkit for interface construction.
  • GConf application configuration service which leverages XML for data persistence.
  • GnomeVFS file access abstraction layer which provides support for network transparent file manipulation.
  • GStreamer multimedia framework which supports dynamic media editing as well as playback.
  • D-Bus interprocess communication system.
  • BlueZ Bluetooth stack.
  • Avahi service for Zeroconf service discovery.

Software public repositories (RPM-based)

Other useful information

Note that are only available for OMAP3 processors
Account information

  • Username: root
  • Password: <empty>

Network configuration (IP addresses)

  • eth0 − 192.168.5.1
  • eth0:0 − assigned via dhcp.
  • wlan0 − 192.168.6.1 (with dhcp server)
  • usb0 − 192.168.7.1 (with dhcp server)

Install

(from How to create a SD-card with the latest software image)

Information.jpg This How-To was tested IGEP SDK Virtual Machine, but most of the contents are valid also for other GNU/Linux distributions.

There is no guarantee that this will work on other ones.

Create IGEP Firmware bootable SD-card

IGEP AM335x - The first thing you'll do is download the latest firwmare from ISEE site Yocto IGEP AM335x
IGEP OMAP 3 - Start session in IGEP SDK Virtual Machine. The first thing you'll do is download the latest firwmare from ISEE site Yocto IGEP OMAP 3
IGEP SMARC i.MX6 Dual/Quad - The first thing you'll do is download the latest firwmare from ISEE site Yocto IGEP SMARC i.MX6 Dual/Quad
IGEP SMARC i.MX6 DualLite - The first thing you'll do is download the latest firwmare from ISEE site Yocto IGEP SMARC i.MX6 DualLite
IGEP SMARC i.MX6 Solo - The first thing you'll do is download the latest firwmare from ISEE site Yocto IGEP SMARC i.MX6 Solo


  1. Select Products -> Processor Boards
  2. Click on your processor board product.
  3. Click on Software tab
  4. Click on IGEP Firmware
  5. Select Download icon.

Once the file is downloaded you can create bootable SD-Card, under Linux, untar the IGEP

tar jxf igep_firmware-yocto-*.tar.bz2
cd igep_firmware-yocto-*

Insert a SD-Card media and use the igep-media-create script to copy the firmware to SD-Card media.

./igep-media-create -–mmc <mmc> --image <image file> --machine <machine>

where:
<mmc> - is the SD-Card device of your computer.
<image file> - is the file that contains bootloader, kernel and rootfs image.
<machine> - is the IGEP Processor Board. Available options are:

  • igep0020 - For IGEP v2 Processor Board
  • igep0030 - For IGEP COM MODULE Processor Board
  • igep0032 - For IGEP COM PROTON Processor Board
  • igep0033 - For IGEP COM AQUILA Processor Board
  • igep0046 - For IGEP iMX6 Processor Board


For example, assuming the SD-card device takes '/dev/sdf' and you have an IGEPv2 board ('igep0020'), type

./igep-media-create --mmc /dev/sdf --machine igep0020 --image demo-image-sato-igep00x0.tar.bz2

For example, assuming the SD-card device takes '/dev/sdb' and you have an IGEP COM MODULE ('igep0030'), type

./igep-media-create --mmc /dev/sdb --machine igep0030 --image demo-image-sato-igep00x0.tar.bz2

These methods should give you a bootable SD-card.


Booting IGEP device and login/connect methods

Insert the bootable SD-card media into the micro-SD card socket of IGEP device and power on it. This should result in a running system with Sato graphical desktop root filesystem built by Yocto.

If you want login in/connect to the system, you have several options:

  • Serial debug link, you should just plug serial cable to your computer
  • Ethernet, you should assign an IP in the range 192.168.5.[2-254] and connect to target using a SSH client and connecting to 192.168.5.1 
  • Wifi, connect to IGEP_xx network, a dynamic IP should be assigned in your host and you can sign into the target connecting to 192.168.6.1
  • USB ethernet gadget, connect a IGEP device to USB port of your computer, dynamic IP should be assigned in your host and you can sign into the target connecting to 192.168.7.1 o (if available) Graphical interface on plugged DVI/TFT display and USB Keyboard in IGEP device

The root password is empty, so to log in type 'root' for the user name and hit 'Enter' at the Password prompt: (empty password) and you should be in.

Then, you could play and fun with IGEP board.

For example, you could flash the latest software image into internal FLASH memory ( How to flash the latest software image )



Igep forum.png If you have any question, don't ask to ask at the IGEP Community Forum or the IGEP Community Chat Irc.png

Extending the IGEP Firmware with packages

Note that the repositories are only available for OMAP3 processors

The IGEP Firmware is based on RPM packages. The RPM Package Manager is a package management system that automates the process of installing, upgrading and removing software packages. If you also need some software that is typically not found in the IGEP Firmware, you can search if this software it’s available in the ISEE repositories.

You can manage packages from the IGEP Firmware using "zypper". Zypper is the command line package manager installed on the IGEP Firmware for installing, removing, updating and querying software packages of local or remote repositories. Use following commands:

  • To get the package list from the repository, use
zypper refresh
  • To search a package
zypper search package_name
  • To install a package from registered repositories, use
zypper install package_name
  • To remove an installed package, use
zypper remove package_name
  • A list of all new packages available can be obtained with the command
zypper list-updates -t package
  • To update your system, just run the
zypper update
  • Other useful zypper commands :
zypper help
zypper help command
Igep forum.png If you have any question, don't ask to ask at the IGEP Community Forum or the IGEP Community Chat Irc.png