Newport Board Support Package (BSP)

Gateworks provides a Board Support Package for Newport which provides source code and an easy mechanism to build different images, including Ubuntu and OpenWrt.

Gateworks uses the term 'BSP' to describe one 'image' file, that contains everything, including all boot firmware, operating system (rootfs and kernel).

The Gateworks BSP is the easiest comprehensive software process because it contains everything. If a deep dive, expert path is desired, each piece of the BSP (boot firmware, rootfs, kernel) can all be built separately.

• Gateworks Newport Linux Kernel
• Gateworks Newport Boot Firmware

BSP Pre-Built Firmware Images

Pre-built firmware images can be found on ​http://dev.gateworks.com/newport.

A sampling includes:

• Entire Board Software (recommended), including boot firmware, bootloader, OS, kernel, etc:
  • ​Newport Images - Compressed Disk Image containing Firmware and kernel and OS (.img.gz files)
    • Ubuntu & OpenWrt
• Newport GSC
  • ​GSC firmware image
• Only Boot Firmware
  • ​firmware-newport.img - Boot Firmware (everything up to and including the bootloader stored on the embedded FLASH boot device) (see newport/boot for details)
• Only Newport Kernel
  • ​linux-newport.tar.xz - Compressed TAR archive of pre-built Linux kernel

Installation instructions are at the following URL: Newport Flashing Instructions

BSP Source Code

Newport Source code for the firmware, bootloader and kernel are hosted at GitHub. We highly recommend you create a GitHub account and 'Watch' these repositories to keep abreast of important feature additions, bugfixes, and firmware-releases. You can configure your GitHub account to e-mail you when changes are made to repositories ​here.

The following GitHub repos are used for Newport:

• ​https://github.com/Gateworks/bsp-newport - Newport BSP support scripts and Makefile (​watch)
• ​https://github.com/Gateworks/manifest-newport - Newport BSP repo Manifest (​watch)
• ​uboot-newport - Newport Bootloader (​watch)
• ​linux-newport - Newport Linux Kernel (​watch)
• ​dts-newport - Newport Linux Device-Tree (​watch)
• ​bdk-newport - Newport BDK (used as Secondary Program Loader) (​watch)
• ​atf-newport - Newport ATF (ARM Trusted Firmware) (​watch)
• ​openwrt - Gateworks OpenWrt (​watch)

Building the BSP from source

Below are instructions for building the entire BSP, which includes all of the bootloader components and Linux kernel and Ubuntu or OpenWrt. Pre-built images are available above.

The Gateworks Newport Board Support Package uses the Google repo tool to manage multiple code repositories.

The following pre-requisites are needed to build the Newport BSP:

• Linux Development host (desktop or laptop computer) (Ubuntu 16.04 is used by Gateworks and tested)
• Python 2.x (required by the 'repo' tool and imaging tools)
• Git (used for source code repositories)
• repo (used to manage multiple git repos)
• libssl-dev (used for signing images)

Installing pre-requisites:

sudo apt-get install build-essential git python repo libssl-dev ncurses-dev

To obtain the code:

1. Initialize repo (fetch the repo manifest)

   mkdir $HOME/newport
   cd $HOME/newport
   repo init -u https://github.com/Gateworks/manifest-newport.git
   

2. Sync repositories (repeat this when you want to fetch the latest code updates)

   repo sync
   

   • This will fetch/update the source repos described above. The first time it can take several minutes depending on your Internet connection and will take approximately ~2.5GB of disk space
3. Setup build environment (*repeat this each time you open shell*)

   source newport/setup-environment
   

4. Build desired software target as definied below. For example:

   make -j8 openwrt-image # build openwrt-newport.img.gz or change to any of below build targets
   

The build targets supported by the Newport BSP include:

• ubuntu-image - builds ubuntu-newport.img.gz: A Compressed Disk Image which includes the 16MB Boot Firmware (BDK/ATF/U-Boot and Device-Tree images) as well as the Kernel and Ubuntu root filesystem.
  • Installation Instructions
• openwrt-image - builds openwrt-newport.img.gz: A Compressed Disk Image which includes the 16MB Boot Firmware (BDK/ATF/U-Boot and Device-Tree images) as well as the OpenWrt Kernel and root filesystem
  • Installation Instructions
• firmware-image - builds 'firmware-newport.img': 16MB Boot Firmware which includes the BDK/ATF/U-Boot and Device-Tree images - (takes about 2 mins on a modern development system).
• kernel_image - builds linux-newport.tar.xz - A compressed tarball of the kernel (boot/Image) and kernel modules (lib/modules/*) which can be used on top of any compatible root filesystem

General installation instructions:

• Flashing / Updating software on Newport SBC
• Creating Entire Disk Images for Booting

Modifying the stand-alone Linux Kernel (ie for Ubuntu)

The Gateworks Newport BSP instructions above create an environment for building the Linux kernel among other targets.

Some additional instructions for common actions (make sure you have already installed the BSP and setup your shell environment as specified above):

• Make standard Gateworks Newport kernel with Gateworks newport_defconfig

  make linux # first build the kernel with the standard newport_defconfig
  

• Modify Kernel configuration (enabling modules etc):

  make kernel_menuconfig # this will do a 'make menuconfig; make savedefconfig' in the kernel directory
  

  • your modified defconfig is now in linux/defconfig if you want to save it away somewhere
• copy your modified defconfig over the newport_defconfig (because 'make kernel_image' will always revert to newport_defconfig)

  cp linux/defconfig linux/arch/arm64/configs/newport_defconfig
  

• Build kernel tarball:

  make kernel_image # builds the kernel and modules and tarball
  

• Build new disk image using the updated kernel tarball:

  make ubuntu-image
  

Modifying OpenWrt (toolchain, apps, kernel)

The OpenWrt build system includes building its own toolchain and kernel (so the kernel and toolchain directories in the bsp directory are not used)

Modifying OpenWrt toolchain, installed applications, and general configuration:

make -C openwrt menuconfig # configure toolchain, installed applications and general configuration

• this results in a custom .config file in the openwrt directory which you may want to save away

Modifying OpenWrt kernel:

make -C openwrt kernel_menuconfig

• this results in modifying target/linux/octeontx/config-* in the openwrt directory which you may want to save away
• Note that some kernel configurations get over-written by OpenWrt despite what you may select here

Build/rebuild OpenWrt (with your customizations):

make openwrt

• results in build artifacts in {{openwrt/bin/targets/octeontx/generic/}}} including rootfs tarball, linux kernel, and squashfs filesystem

Building OpenWrt Image from Newport BSP directory:

make openwrt-image # builds OpenWrt for octeontx and compressed disk image

• results in openwrt-newport.img - see bsp/Makefile openwrt-image target for details