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Ubuntu on Newport

Ubuntu on Newport

This page is dedicated details regarding running Ubuntu on an Gateworks Newport Board.

Gateworks pre-built Ubuntu Disk Image

Gateworks provides a pre-built Ubuntu firmware images for the Newport Family:

linux-newport.tar.xz - Compressed TAR archive of pre-built Linux kernel
xenial-newport.tar.gz - Compressed TAR archive of Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial arm64 root filesystem (does not include kernel) (package manifest)
xenial-newport.img.gz - Compressed Disk Image containing Firmware, Linux kernel, and Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial root filesystem. To update the firmware using this see here

Features:

Ubuntu 16.04 aarch64 core (from debootstrap instructions)
Gateworks Newport Linux kernel (Linux 4.14 based)
several pre-installed packages
eth0 dhcp
user root passwd root

To install the kernel and root filesystem on a removable block storage device see below.

Disk Images

Gateworks releases disk images that can be easily flashed using the U-Boot Bootloader (see here). These disk images contain a partition table so they are tailored to the specific eMMC device on the boards they are intended for. Additionally they are configured for a small partition size to keep flash programming time at a minimum. This requires resizing the rootfs partition be resized in order to take advantage of the remaining flash space.

The script used to create these images can be found on GitHub here and an example usage is:

sudo ./mkimage xenial-newport 7264 1536 firmware-newport.img xenial-newport.tar.xz linux-newport.tar.xz

The user partition of the 8GiB eMMC used on Newport is 7264MB
We need around 1536MB of partition space for the extracted kernel and root filesystem

To flash this compressed disk image to a board see here

To install the kernel and root filesystem on a removable block storage device see linux/blockdev.

Root filesystem

A popular way to create an Ubuntu root filesystem is to use the deboostrap utility on a Debian or Ubuntu host. This tool provides a 2-stage install where the second stage is within a chroot environment using qemu.

Requirements:

Linux Ubuntu or Debian System with network connection and sudo permissions

Important notes:

we set and use target and distro env variables in step 2 and use those env variables in the remaining steps to make this tutorial more version-agnostic. Please be aware of this and do not deviate from the steps unless or until you completely understand what you are doing.

Steps:

Install pre-requisites:

sudo apt-get install qemu-user-static debootstrap binfmt-support

Perform first stage install of minimal filesystem for arm64 architecture:
```
target=rootfs
distro=xenial
sudo debootstrap --arch=arm64 --foreign $distro $target
# copy qemu-arm-static binary for the binfmt packages to find it and copy in resolv.conf from host
sudo cp /usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static $target/usr/bin
```
- See http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/ for a list of current Ubuntu releases: 16.10=yakkety (latest), 16.04=xenial (latest LTS), 15.04=vivid, 14.10=utopic (LTS), 14.04=trusty (LTS), 12.04=precise (LTS), 10.04=lucid (LTS).
- this minimal rootfs can be considered about the same as an Ubuntu-core downloaded rootfs however it is still missing some core packages and configuration before it can be booted. These steps are taken care of in a 2nd stage install within a chroot shell
- the chroot shell below will provide network support (inherited from the host)

we now have a minimal Ubuntu rootfs - chroot to it and perform the 2nd stage install:

sudo chroot $target
# now we are in the chroot
distro=xenial
export LANG=C
# setup second stage
/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

this is the most minimal rootfs we would recommend

(optional) add additional apt package repos:

cat <<EOT > /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports $distro main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports $distro-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports $distro-security main restricted universe multiverse
EOT

you may want to customize the above list, depending on your needs. See below for more detail on Ubuntu package feeds

(optional) update package database and setup locales (do not skip this step if you are needing to install any packages for the steps below or otherwise)
```
apt-get update
apt-get -f install # fixup missing package dependencies
apt-get install locales dialog
dpkg-reconfigure locales
```

set hostname:

echo ${distro}-$(uname -m) > /etc/hostname

set a root passwd so you can login

passwd

or consider adding a user via adduser:

adduser myuser
usermod -a -G tty myuser # add to tty group for tty access
usermod -a -G dialout myuser # add to dialout group for UART access
usermod -a -G sudo myuser # add to sudo group for root access

(optional) configure networking:

wired ethernet with DHCP on eth0

cat <<EOF >> /etc/network/interfaces
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

EOF

or static IP:

cat <<EOF >> /etc/network/interfaces
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.254

EOF

or wireless (requires ~3MB of additional packages):

apt-get install wpasupplicant iw
cat << EOF >> /etc/network/interfaces
# Wireless interface
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wireless_mode managed
        wireless_essid any
        wpa-driver nl80211
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

EOF
wpa_passphrase <myssid> <mypass> >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

(optional) install some useful packages

apt-get install openssh-server # ssh server for remote access
apt-get install can-utils i2c-tools usbutils pciutils # cmdline tools for various hardware support

Note that by default root ssh access is disabled for security. See below for info on enabling it

exit the chroot shell and remove files we no longer need
```
exit
sudo rm $target/usr/bin/qemu-arm-static
```

At this point you have a directory containing a root filesystem (without kernel) and likely want to install it onto removable storage or the on-board FLASH of a target board. Some intermediate formats that are useful to keep around would be a tarball, perhaps an ext4 filesystem image, or a compressed disk image suitable for flashing in the U-Boot bootloader.

To create a tarball which is the most flexible storage format and can be used for a variety of future installation uses:

sudo tar --numeric-owner -cvJf xenial-newport.tar.xz rootfs/ .

To create a 'Compressed Disk Image' using this tarball see above and to install this onto a board's embedded FLASH see here.

ext4 filesystem

If desired you can create an ext4 filesystem from the directory or tarball. This requires you choose a size for the filesystem. This size can be increased at runtime using resize2fs as long as the partition table has room for it to grow. The advantage of using an as small as possible size is that the time necessary to flash it onto storage is reduced to a minimum (when flashing you have to write the entire ext4 fs but when formatting or resizing it only has to write periodic markers to FLASH).

For a given size (see SIZEMB variable below) you can create a rootfs with:

SIZEMB=1536 # 1.5GB - expandable later with resize2fs
OUT=xenial-newport.ext4
# create a file of specific size
truncate -s ${SIZEMB}M ${OUT}
# format it as an ext4 filesystem
mkfs.ext4 -q -F -L rootfs ${OUT}
# mount it to a temporary mount point
tmp_mnt=$(mktemp -d -p/tmp)
mount ${OUT} ${tmp_mnt}
# copy files to it
cp -rup rootfs/* ${tmp_mnt}
# and/or extract files from a tarball
tar -C ${tmp_mnt} -xf linux-newport.tar.xz
# unmount temporary mount point
umount ${tmp_mnt}
sync
# compress it
gzip -k -f ${OUT}

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