Pandaboard

Hi

I’m a new user with little Linux experience and I recently bought a used Pandaboard A2.
I was looking to try to get an OS running because I didn’t know if the board worked and I got the board working with a pre-built image that I downloaded from Larry Lisky’s website. The image is Ubuntu 14.04 and it booted up and worked, however there wasn’t much functionality, much of the manual installation process that Larry documents would need to be implemented on the working image and also the image is on a 4GB root partition which made it unable to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04.
I saw the wiki by Robert Nelson to install Ubuntu 18.04 and started to follow the procedure but I only got as far as the export command to transfer the decompressed gnu cross compiler from the ufs-mount ~$ prompt.
I have a working install of Ubuntu 18.04 server and the command : export CC=‘pwd’ etc. doesn’t have any output and the subsequent command doesn’t work.
I’m a Linux noob and I found out that ‘pwd’ is print working directory, command that works on my server install, but as I’m unable to get the decompressed cross compiler image exported, I’m stuck and would appreciate some help, please!

@sP1d3r,

export CC=`pwd`

Should not have any output, it’s just setting the variable CC. But I’m a little worried, in your question, you crossed your ` (backquote/backtick) with ’ (apostrophe). On the us keyboard it’s on the upper left under the esc key. So double check, that you following the directions as written. (or this forum didn’t allow you do actually show what you typed…)

export CC=`pwd`/gcc-linaro-6.5.0-2018.12-x86_64_arm-linux-gnueabihf/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-

https://www.digikey.com/eewiki/display/linuxonarm/PandaBoard#PandaBoard-ARMCrossCompiler:GCC

PS, you can also just copy and paste the lines from the wiki into your terminal…

Regards,

Thank you for your quick response, I’d made the mistake that you noticed.

I thought that the ‘pwd’ meant that a password was required, since I typed that command with my password when the system boots there’s now a Grub menu, which never used to happen…!

Kind regards,

Hello again, I think that the grub menu is because there are now two kernel versions of Ubuntu 18.04 since some upgrades that were installed today.
I’ve not got any GUI on my system because the graphics card won’t display any graphics output without artefacts, so I can only use the cli.

Thanks again,

Hello again

I’ve now got to the ‘make’ part of the process and I’ve found a problem, which is that the make…omap4…_defconfig command doesn’t work.
This appears to be due to a missing script, kconfig.tab.c I believe. I’ve looked in the relevant scripts directory and the script referenced by YACC is missing from the directory.
I could put a suitable file into the directory with sudo nano or sudo vim if I knew what to type, or import it. I think it mustn’t have been included in the u-boot download, I haven’t deleted it.

Kind regards,

@sP1d3r, you must have a fresh ubuntu install on your pc, so let’s start with some basic development tools.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential bison flex

Then please pastebin (or use a camera to take a picture) of “exactly” what your terminal shows after:

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC}

Regards,

Hi

I’ve entered the commands and rebooted and the exact message after the make command is:
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

Kind regards,

Sorry about that, I should have been in the u-boot directory.
I’ve run the command and the output is shown in the picture.WP_20200304_00_46_05_Pro|690x388
Thanks for your patience,

@sP1d3r, thanks for the picture, the “.config” never got generated, this was at the “omap4_panda_defconfig” stage of the directions… So now that those dependencies are installed run:

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} distclean
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC} omap4_panda_defconfig
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=${CC}

For reference, this is what you should see/do…

Regards,

Hi

I followed the procedure and the listing from the third command only got as far as the first ‘CC’ instance, so I installed Ubuntu server 19.10 on another disk and restarted the whole procedure, this time it’s as the listings.
I’m unsure of the git checkout command for the armv7-multiplatform repository, it looks like the branch is derived from the Ubuntu kernel version. The kernel version of the 19.10 is 5.3.x so what would the git checkout command be for this, please?

Kind regards,

@sP1d3r, it doesn’t really matter what Ubuntu uses by default, as you are not using Ubuntu’s kernel.

For the PandaBoard, i recommend a couple different branches:

https://www.digikey.com/eewiki/display/linuxonarm/PandaBoard#PandaBoard-LinuxKernel

For a general hint, just use v4.19.x for the pandaboard:

git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/armv7-multiplatform
cd armv7-multiplatform/
git checkout origin/v4.19.x -b tmp

Regards,

Hi

I’m wondering what the correct procedure during the kernel compilation process for the attached screen, I exited the screen and as far as I know the ‘kernel features’ were saved into a file called ‘config.’
Although I was able to compile the kernel, I’m going to have to start the whole process again due to problems with my system.
I was also unable to mount the rootfs partition to write the kernel but I think that it’s linked to the problem with the system.


I hope to retry soon!

Kind regards,

@sP1d3r, just hit the “esc” key twice, to exit menuconfig. The build script shows you the menuconfig by default so you can easily make some changes if you need to.

Regards,

Hi
I’ve installed Ubuntu desktop on my spare pc and restarted the procedure and now I’ve got a similar problem to the one I had before that I can’t mount the rootfs partition.
The message is:
mount: /media/rootfs: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

Perhaps I’ve not got the correct package installed, is it possible for you to tell from the message?
The rootfs partition message is;

Creating filesystem with 8190976 4k blocks and 2048000 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 67d95b23-70bd-486f-97c9-0b9bc2d56f9f
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Your help is much appreciated,

Kind regards,

Hi

I’ve sorted the partition problem, there was something wrong with the micro-SD card that I’d been using.
Using another card solved this, I was able to copy all the files onto the card and the Pandaboard booted up ok.
It didn’t have network connectivity, I’m going to see it I can get it to connect to the ubuntu servers.
I’m grateful for your help, I’ve learned something new and I hope to progress.

Kind regards,

Hi

If it’s of any interest, with the Ubuntu 18.04 desktop I installed I was able to resize the rootfs partition of the pre-built Lubuntu v14.04 for Pandaboard disk image that I downloaded from LarryLisky.com, which made it possible to upgrade to Lubuntu 16.04 LTS.
I use a special ‘wind tunnel’ for a lot of updating or upgrading, see picture.
It’s possible to upgrade to Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, so it’d be interesting to compare the upgraded version with the 18.04 LTS that I was able to compile with your help using your wiki.

Thank you once again,