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  1. Third Party Linux
    1. Building Gateworks Ventana kernel
      1. Sources
      2. Building
    2. Root filesystem Sources
    3. Creating a bootable block device (mSATA/USB/uSD)

Third Party Linux

While Gateworks cannot fully support all Linux distros, it is relatively simple to overlay a Gateworks Ventana kernel onto any non-Gateworks third party Linux distro rootfs image.

Building Gateworks Ventana kernel

Sources

Gateworks has several kernel tree's to choose from hosted on Github ​here

Checking out source (for example, the gateworks_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga kernel): 

git clone https://github.com/Gateworks/linux-imx6.git gateworks_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga
cd gateworks_3.10.17_1.0.0_ga

Building

To build a kernel using an external toolchain (for example, an OpenWrt toolchain built in /usr/src/openwrt-gw-trunk): 

# setup toolchain
export STAGING_DIR=/usr/src/openwrt/gw-trunk/trunk/staging_dir
export TOOLCHAIN=toolchain-arm_cortex-a9+neon_gcc-4.8-linaro_uClibc-0.9.33.2_eabi
export PATH=$PATH:$STAGING_DIR/$TOOLCHAIN/bin/
# set LOADADDR (necessary to make a uImage)
export LOADADDR=10008000
# use the Gateworks kernel config (optional)
ARCH=arm make gwventana_defconfig
# alter kenrel configuration (optional)
ARCH=arm make menuconfig
# build standard targets (uImage modules dtbs)
CROSS_COMPILE=arm-openwrt-linux- ARCH=arm make uImage modules dtbs

To create a tarball of uImage, modules and dtbs (suitable to un-tar on top of a rootfs): 

KERNEL_VER=$(cat include/config/kernel.release)
TARBALL=linux-$KERNEL_VER.tar
# create tarball containing kernel modules
find -name *.ko | xargs tar --transform "s,^.,/lib/modules/$KERNEL_VER," --show-transformed-names -cvf $TARBALL
# add modules database for depmod
tar --transform "s,^.,/lib/modules/$KERNEL_VER," --show-transformed-names -rvf $TARBALL ./modules.order ./modules.builtin
# add uImage (to /boot)
tar --transform "s,^arch/arm/boot,/boot," --show-transformed-names -rvf $TARBALL arch/arm/boot/uImage
# add dtbs (if using a device-tree kerhttps://github.com/Gateworks/linux-imx6.gitnel) to /boot)
tar --transform "s,^arch/arm/boot/dts,/boot," --show-transformed-names -rvf $TARBALL arch/arm/boot/dts/imx6*gw*.dtb
# gzip it
gzip -f $TARBALL

Root filesystem Sources

There are several sources of pre-built root filesystems that are compatible with Ventana. As Ventana uses an i.MX6 SoC, you need to use something that is compatible with an ARMv7 instruction set. Many pre-built distributions will reference 'armhf' which means 'ARM hard-float' which is appropriate for the i.MX6 as it has hardware floating-point.

Some popular third-party sources:

Note that Gateworks has a pre-built disk image of Ubuntu for Ventana. See ​here for details about it and more details on building Ubuntu root filesystems

Creating a bootable block device (mSATA/USB/uSD)

The following procedure will for virtually all Linux distributions:

  1. Download Root Filesystem (see above)
  2. Download or build Ventana rootfs containing a Kernel, device-tree dtbs, and kernel modules:
  3. Create image on block storage device. For example, using /dev/sdc: 
    DEVICE=/dev/sdc
# unmount all auto-mounted partitions for this device
sudo umount ${DEVICE}?
# partition disk - single ext partition
printf ",,L,,\n" | sudo sfdisk ${DEVICE}
sudo mkfs.ext4 -L UBUNTU ${DEVICE}1
# mount partition
sudo udisks --mount ${DEVICE}1
# untar the root filesystem downloaded (modify --strip-components parameter to strip subdirs as necessary depending on archive)
sudo tar --strip-components=1 --numeric-owner -xvzf linaro-raring-alip-20130826-474.tar.gz -C /media/UBUNTU/
# untar the Ventana kernel, modules, device-tree from Gateworks kernel archive
sudo tar --numeric-owner -C /media/UBUNTU/ -xvzf rootfs.tar.gz ./boot
sudo tar --numeric-owner -C /media/UBUNTU/ -xvzf rootfs.tar.gz ./lib/modules/
# unmount the disk
sudo umount ${DEVICE}1

Notes: