Friday, November 14, 2014

Qt 5.3.2 Beaglebone Binaries

Overview

If you saw my Qt 5.2 Binaries post, this will look very familiar....

Prerequisites

For this build, I wanted to try to enable support for everything. I got close, but didn't want to put forth the extra effort for the packages that were not obvious to install. You can mix and match the following installs, depending on your needs.
> sudo apt-get install libicu-dev
> sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev
> sudo apt-get install libudev-dev
> sudo apt-get install libmtdev-dev
> sudo apt-get install libegl1-mesa-dev
> sudo apt-get install libopenvg1-mesa-dev

KMS seems to be already installed (libdrm-dev), but the configuration script cannot find it. Also, some more research is needed before GLX can be enabled. The Debian package search tool is an awesome resource for finding files in packages.

Configuration

Here is the command line I used to generate the make files:
> ./configure -v -opensource -confirm-license -prefix /usr/local/qt-5.3.2 -qt-xcb

The cross compile feature changed slightly from 5.2, but 5.3 detects the local environment fairly well, so you no longer need to pass "-device" into the configuration script.

The Qt configuration script takes about 20 minutes to run on a rev. C Beaglebone Black. It first builds a native version of qmake, which takes about 15 minutes, then it tests for available modules.

Here is the configuration summary:
Configure summary

Build type: linux-g++ (arm, CPU features:)
Platform notes:

- Also available for Linux: linux-kcc linux-icc linux-cxx

qmake vars .......... styles += mac fusion windows QT_LIBS_DBUS = -ldbus-1 QT_CFLAGS_DBUS = -I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dbus-1.0/include QT_HOST_CFLAGS_DBUS = -I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dbus-1.0/include QT_CFLAGS_GLIB = -pthread -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include QT_LIBS_GLIB = -pthread -lgthread-2.0 -lrt -lglib-2.0 QT_CFLAGS_QGTKSTYLE = -pthread -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/gdk-pixbuf-2.0 -I/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/gio-unix-2.0/ -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12 QT_LIBS_QGTKSTYLE = -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 QT_CFLAGS_QGTK2 = -pthread -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/gtk-2.0/include -I/usr/include/atk-1.0 -I/usr/include/cairo -I/usr/include/gdk-pixbuf-2.0 -I/usr/include/pango-1.0 -I/usr/include/gio-unix-2.0/ -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/pixman-1 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/libpng12 QT_LIBS_QGTK2 = -lgtk-x11-2.0 -lgdk-x11-2.0 -latk-1.0 -lgio-2.0 -lpangoft2-1.0 -lpangocairo-1.0 -lgdk_pixbuf-2.0 -lcairo -lpango-1.0 -lfreetype -lfontconfig -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 QT_CFLAGS_PULSEAUDIO = -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include QT_LIBS_PULSEAUDIO = -lpulse-mainloop-glib -lpulse -lglib-2.0 QMAKE_CFLAGS_FONTCONFIG = -I/usr/include/freetype2 QMAKE_LIBS_FONTCONFIG = -lfontconfig -lfreetype QMAKE_INCDIR_LIBUDEV = QMAKE_LIBS_LIBUDEV = -ludev QMAKE_X11_PREFIX = /usr QMAKE_XKB_CONFIG_ROOT = /usr/share/X11/xkb QMAKE_INCDIR_EGL = /usr/include/libdrm QMAKE_LIBS_EGL = -lEGL QMAKE_CFLAGS_EGL = QMAKE_CFLAGS_XCB = QMAKE_LIBS_XCB = -lxcb QMAKE_CFLAGS_DIRECTFB = -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/directfb QMAKE_LIBS_DIRECTFB = -ldirectfb -lfusion -ldirect -lpthread sql-drivers = sql-plugins = sqlite
qmake switches .........

Build options:
Configuration .......... accessibility accessibility-atspi-bridge alsa audio-backend c++11 clock-gettime clock-monotonic compile_examples concurrent cups dbus directfb egl egl_x11 eglfs evdev eventfd fontconfig full-config getaddrinfo getifaddrs glib gtk2 gtkstyle iconv icu inotify ipv6ifname large-config largefile libudev linuxfb medium-config minimal-config mremap mtdev nis no-harfbuzz opengl openssl openvg pcre png posix_fallocate precompile_header pulseaudio qpa qpa reduce_exports release rpath shared small-config system-freetype system-jpeg system-png system-zlib xcb xcb-plugin xcb-qt xcb-sm xcb-xlib xinput2 xkbcommon-qt xlib xrender
Build parts ............ libs tools examples
Mode ................... release
Using C++11 ............ yes
Using PCH .............. yes
Target compiler supports:
iWMMXt/Neon .......... no/auto

Qt modules and options:
Qt D-Bus ............... yes (loading dbus-1 at runtime)
Qt Concurrent .......... yes
Qt GUI ................. yes
Qt Widgets ............. yes
Large File ............. yes
QML debugging .......... yes
Use system proxies ..... no

Support enabled for:
Accessibility .......... yes
ALSA ................... yes
CUPS ................... yes
Evdev .................. yes
FontConfig ............. yes
FreeType ............... yes (system library)
Glib ................... yes
GTK theme .............. yes
HarfBuzz ............... no
Iconv .................. yes
ICU .................... yes
Image formats:
GIF .................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using system library)
PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using system library)
journald ............... no
mtdev .................. yes (system library)
Networking:
getaddrinfo .......... yes
getifaddrs ........... yes
IPv6 ifname .......... yes
OpenSSL .............. yes (loading libraries at run-time)
NIS .................... yes
OpenGL / OpenVG:
EGL .................. yes
OpenGL ............... desktop
OpenVG ............... yes-auto
PCRE ................... yes (bundled copy)
pkg-config ............. yes
PulseAudio ............. yes
QPA backends:
DirectFB ............. yes
EGLFS ................ yes
KMS .................. no
LinuxFB .............. yes
XCB .................. yes (bundled copy)
EGL on X ........... yes
GLX ................ no
MIT-SHM ............ yes
Xcb-Xlib ........... yes
Xcursor ............ yes (loaded at runtime)
Xfixes ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
Xi ................. no
Xi2 ................ yes
Xinerama ........... yes (loaded at runtime)
Xrandr ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
Xrender ............ yes
XKB ................ yes
XShape ............. yes
XSync .............. yes
XVideo ............. yes
Session management ..... yes
SQL drivers:
DB2 .................. no
InterBase ............ no
MySQL ................ no
OCI .................. no
ODBC ................. no
PostgreSQL ........... no
SQLite 2 ............. no
SQLite ............... yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
TDS .................. no
udev ................... yes
xkbcommon .............. yes (bundled copy, XKB config root: /usr/share/X11/xkb)
zlib ................... yes (system library)

NOTE: libxkbcommon and libxkbcommon-x11 0.4.1 or higher not found on the system, will use the bundled version from 3rd party directory.
NOTE: Qt is using double for qreal on this system. This is binary incompatible against Qt 5.1. Configure with '-qreal float' to create a build that is binary compatible with 5.1.
Info: creating super cache file /media/sda2/qt5.3.2/bbb_all/.qmake.super

Qt is now configured for building. Just run 'make'.
Once everything is built, you must run 'make install'.
Qt will be installed into /usr/local/qt-5.3.2

Prior to reconfiguration, make sure you remove any leftovers from
the previous build.



Before calling make, ensure that you have enough free space. The qt source folder starts at 920 Mb and will grow to 1.9 Gb during the compile (building only the libs requires 1.5 Gb and building libs and tools only requires 1.7 Gb). An additional 180 Mb is needed if a 'make install' is performed. I did a shadow build on a USB Flash drive (run /path/to/configure from an empty folder), as I was cutting it close on the internal eMMC. It took the BBB 12 hours to compile the libs only, 16 hours to compile the libs and tools, and 21 hours to compile libs, tools, and examples.

For convenience, I've included three zipped archives of the binaries for this build. The unlabeled build contains libs, tools, and examples. The others should be self explanatory. Once expanded, the libs package uses 94 Mb, the libs and tools package uses 104 Mb, and the full package uses 180 Mb

MD5SUM:
6dc968164bc532bea18b550f46660c3d  qt-5.3.2-no-examples.tar.xz(22 Mb)
ae7f9b7c8d0134e7c253500a64a9b9d7  qt-5.3.2-libs.tar.xz (18 Mb)
a735f85d028e1627fbfd031c58434ea5  qt-5.3.2.tar.xz (40 Mb)


Extract to /usr/local ('tar -xf file.tar.xz'), as the tarball contains the qt-5.3.2 folder in it.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Beaglebone Debian Read Only Filesystem

Overview

To save the eMMC and to allow for faster bootup/shutdowns, I wanted to mount the root partition as read-only. I spent many days researching and trying to find out what areas of the filesystem needed to have write permissions. It seemed like I was going in circles. Unionfs, aufs, mount -bind, overlayfs, tmpfs.....so many options and so many modules that didn't exist in the default BBB Debian kernel. I finally got so fed up that I decided to just start hacking away at the fstab.

Details

It turns out that the basic read-only filesystem is fairly easy to create, as everything that needs to be configured is contained in /etc/fstab. We need to change the root mount to read-only and add a couple of temporary file systems to handle logs and such. Let's start with an ordinary fstab created by the eMMC flasher script:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Auto generated by: beaglebone-black-eMMC-flasher.sh
#
UUID=716e1ca7-bc61-4958-8c0d-665e48102cfd / ext4 ro,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=0DFE-E81B /boot/uboot auto defaults 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs defaults 0 0

We could then use the following sed command to add the "ro" tag to the root mount line and save it to a temporary fstab file:
> sudo sed s:ext4\ \ noatime:ext4\ \ ro,noatime: /etc/fstab_ro

Next we need to append some tmpfs declarations to our temporary fstab file:
> sudo nano /etc/fstab_ro

and put the following lines at the end:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=32M 0 0
tmpfs /srv tmpfs nodev,size=512K 0 0
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=1M 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=512K 0 0
tmpfs /var/run tmpfs defaults,noatime,size=512K 0 0

Replace the real /etc/fstab with your temporary file:
> sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig
> sudo mv /etc/fstab_ro /etc/fstab

Reboot and you're done!

You may have to experiment with different size limits, depending on your logging needs, but the sizes above should get you started.

Alternate Method

Systemd does the actually mounting, by parsing the fstab. The order in which the mounts are created is not guaranteed. If you need to create mounts in a particular order you need to create a systemd .mount unit for each mount:
> sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/my.mount


with content similar to the following:
[Unit]
Description=Runtime Directory
Before=local-fs.target

[Mount]
What=/mine
Where=/tmp/myfs
Type=bind
Options=bind

Remount RW

If you need to modify the filesystem, you can remount it rw, for a while, with the following command:
> sudo mount -o remount,rw /

To return to read-only mode, either reboot or run this command:
> sudo mount -o remount,ro /

References

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beagleboard/9J2r8xn3-Os
http://adis.ca/tag/beaglebone/
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/27449/mount-a-filesystem-read-only-and-redirect-writes-to-ram
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/aufsRootFileSystemOnUsbFlash
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/81959/how-to-mount-aufs-file-system-on-boot-in-archlinux
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2013/05/linux-aufs/
https://wiki.debian.org/ReadonlyRoot
https://code.google.com/p/rootaufs/wiki/HowToUse

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

TFTP and NFS Debian on Beaglebone Black

Overview

Back when I was working with kernel 3.2 and the TI Linux SDK, I had the Beaglebone booting to a NFS. I thought it would be nice to do that again, because it is very convenient for development purposes.

Downloads

Get this if you don't already have a micro SD card with an image on it:
Debian eMMC Flasher (can also be used as a live system): Official Image, Other Versions


Background

I will break up the configuration into three parts:
  • TFTP
  • NFS
  • Local bootstrap

Monday, March 10, 2014

Qt 5.2.1 Beaglebone Binaries

Overview

So, how did I create these binaries....well I thought it would be fun to see how long it would take the Beaglebone to compile Qt. Here is a brief description of my setup.

I powered the Beaglebone with a 5v power supply and booted a Debian rootfs using TFTP and NFS (a future post will explain how to configure this) so I could utilize the large HD of my Linux host. After compiling and installing Qt, the total root filesystem usage is around 3 Gb. The actual compile took about 21 hours, which includes compiling all examples and plugins.

Configuration

I created a simple shell script to modify the Qt source, with the Beaglebone configuration, and run the Qt configuration script:
#!/bin/sh
# Create beaglebone hard float configuration file
cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.2.1/qtbase/mkspecs/devices/
cp -r linux-beagleboard-g++ linux-beaglebone-g++
sed 's/softfp/hard/' <linux-beagleboard-g++/qmake.conf >linux-beaglebone-g++/qmake.conf
# Run configuration
cd ../../../
./configure -v -opensource -confirm-license -prefix /usr/local/qt-5.2 -no-largefile -no-accessibility -qt-zlib -no-gif -qt-libpng -qt-libjpeg -no-nis -no-cups -device linux-beaglebone-g++


This produced the following summary:
   Configure summary
Build type:    linux-g++ (arm, CPU features:)
Platform notes:
            - Also available for Linux: linux-kcc linux-icc linux-cxx
        
qmake vars .......... styles += mac fusion windows DEFINES += QT_NO_MTDEV QT_CFLAGS_DBUS = -I/usr/include/dbus-1.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dbus-1.0/include   QT_LIBS_DBUS = -ldbus-1   QT_CFLAGS_GLIB = -pthread -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include   QT_LIBS_GLIB = -pthread -lgthread-2.0 -lrt -lglib-2.0   QT_CFLAGS_PULSEAUDIO = -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/glib-2.0/include   QT_LIBS_PULSEAUDIO = -lpulse-mainloop-glib -lpulse -lglib-2.0   DEFINES += QT_NO_LIBUDEV QMAKE_CFLAGS_XCB =   QMAKE_LIBS_XCB = -lxcb   QMAKE_CFLAGS_DIRECTFB = -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/directfb   QMAKE_LIBS_DIRECTFB = -ldirectfb -lfusion -ldirect -lpthread   sql-drivers =  sql-plugins =  sqlite qmake switches ......... 
Build options:
  Configuration .......... alsa audio-backend c++11 clock-gettime clock-monotonic compile_examples concurrent dbus directfb evdev eventfd full-config getaddrinfo getifaddrs glib iconv inotify ipv6ifname large-config linuxfb medium-config minimal-config mremap neon no-gif no-harfbuzz opengl openssl pcre png posix_fallocate precompile_header pulseaudio qpa qpa reduce_exports reduce_relocations release rpath shared small-config system-freetype xcb xcb-qt xkbcommon-qt xlib zlib 
  Build parts ............ libs tools examples
  Mode ................... release
  Using C++11 ............ yes
  Using PCH .............. yes
  Target compiler supports:
    iWMMXt/Neon .......... no/yes
Qt modules and options:
  Qt D-Bus ............... yes (loading dbus-1 at runtime)
  Qt Concurrent .......... yes
  Qt GUI ................. yes
  Qt Widgets ............. yes
  JavaScriptCore JIT ..... yes (To be decided by JavaScriptCore)
  QML debugging .......... yes
  Use system proxies ..... no
Support enabled for:
  Accessibility .......... no
  ALSA ................... yes
  CUPS ................... no
  FontConfig ............. no
  FreeType ............... system
  Iconv .................. yes
  ICU .................... no
  Image formats: 
    GIF .................. no
    JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using bundled copy)
  Glib ................... yes
  GTK theme .............. no
  Large File ............. no
  mtdev .................. no
  Networking: 
    getaddrinfo .......... yes
    getifaddrs ........... yes
    IPv6 ifname .......... yes
    OpenSSL .............. yes (loading libraries at run-time)
  NIS .................... no
  OpenGL ................. desktop
  OpenVG ................. no
  PCRE ................... yes (bundled copy)
  pkg-config ............. yes 
  PulseAudio ............. yes
  QPA backends: 
    DirectFB ............. yes
    EGLFS ................ no
    KMS .................. no
    LinuxFB .............. yes
    XCB .................. yes (bundled copy)
      MIT-SHM ............ yes
      Xcb-Xlib ........... no
      Xcursor ............ yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xfixes ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xi ................. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xi2 ................ no
      Xinerama ........... yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrandr ............. yes (loaded at runtime)
      Xrender ............ no
      XKB ................ yes
      XShape ............. yes
      XSync .............. yes
      XVideo ............. yes
  Session management ..... yes
  SQL drivers: 
    DB2 .................. no
    InterBase ............ no
    MySQL ................ no
    OCI .................. no
    ODBC ................. no
    PostgreSQL ........... no
    SQLite 2 ............. no
    SQLite ............... yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    TDS .................. no
  udev ................... no
  xkbcommon .............. yes (bundled copy)
  zlib ................... yes (bundled copy)
NOTE: libxkbcommon 0.2.0 (or higher) not found on the system, will use 
the bundled version from 3rd party directory.
NOTE: Qt is using double for qreal on this system. This is binary incompatible against Qt 5.1.
Configure with '-qreal float' to create a build that is binary compatible with 5.1.

If you've tried cross compiling Qt, from my other posts, you will notice a lot more modules are enabled in this build.

I've tested a few examples and they all work, but I have not tested everything (haven't been able to test touch screen stuff yet). The examples default to using X11, if you want to use the linuxfb, add '-platform linuxfb' to the command line options. For example:
> analogclock -platform linuxfb

Here are two versions of binaries, one that includes examples (78 Mb) and one that does not (36 Mb).

MD5SUM:
9395fc70f576e58b68df7d732a002abb  qt-5.2-no-examples.tgz
f698f038166c4b2f65cec40056e23db2  qt-5.2.tgz

Extract to /usr/local, as the tarball contains the qt-5.2 folder in it.

If you want to try your hand at compiling applications on the Beaglebone, these packages have a native qmake included. Don't forget to add /usr/local/qt-5.2/bin to your path.

Have fun!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Why Qt Development was stalled....

I finally finished my digital I/O cape! It only took about two and a half hours to hand solder all of the components. It is fully tested and ready to go.

It has an isolated DC to DC converter, 16 optically isolated digital inputs and 16 optically isolated digital outputs, a 4 wire RS-422 port, and an optically isolated 2 wire RS-485 port.


I have released the Eagle 6.5 project files, for my older v1.0 board (v2.0 is in the photo), on GitHub: https://github.com/compeoree/bb-dio-cape.

Now back to Qt 5.....

Sunday, January 26, 2014

element14 BB-View and the Debian Beta

This is a post I made at the element14 Community pages:

I thought some other might like to know how to get the BB-View working under the latest Debian beta images.

Unfortunately, you are going to have to recompile the Kernel. The video works fine without a recompile (the red/blue swap is easy to fix), but the touchscreen control connections are not the same as the standard TI 4-wire interface. I tried to patch the ti_am335x_tsc.c file, so the changes would be limited to a dts recompile, but I haven't been able to get that working yet (I'm pretty sure it is a state machine / bit assignment issue). But anyway, here are the steps that you need to perform.....

Overview

1) Download the necessary files
     a) Robert Nelson's handy tools for compiling the Beaglebone kernel
     b) BB-View source for Angstrom
2) Build the default kernel
3) Patch the Kernel and perform a fast recompile
4) Copy the new kernel to the Beaglebone
5) Edit the xorg.conf file to correct the Red/Blue color swap
6) Revel in the 4 days you just saved 

Let's Get Started

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64 bit running in a VirtualBox VM to compile the kernel:
Make a new folder called bb-view, this is where our build will happen.
> mkdir bb-view
> cd bb-view

Install git, if you haven't already:
> apt-get install git

Clone Robert Nelson's linux-dev project locally. Be prepared for a large download (~100 Mb for the cross-compiler and ~700 Mb for the kernel source).
> git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-dev.git

Change into the new linux-dev folder and select branch/tag that matches the Debian version.
> cd linux-dev
> git checkout 3.8.13-bone37 -b tmp

Now we need to build the base image, so our cape drivers folder gets populated. The script will tell you if you need to do or install anything else. 
> ./build_kernel.sh

Come back in an hour or so.....(You might want to download the Angstrom source from element14 now)

Patching the Kernel

Extract two files from the Angstrom source:
> unzip angstrom-source.zip
> tar -zxf bb-black-kernel-3.8.13-bb-view.tar.bz2
> cp ./kernel/kernel/drivers/input/touchscreen/ti_am335x_tsc.c  ~/bb-view/linux-dev/KERNEL/drivers/input/touchscreen/
> cp ./kernel/kernel/firmware/capes/BB-VIEW-LCD7-01-00A0.dts  ~/bb-view/linux-dev/KERNEL/firmware/capes/

Now we need to let the compiler know that we want to add the firmware to the build:
> nano   ~/bb-view/linux-dev/KERNEL/firmware/Makefile

Add the following line somewhere near line 192 (CTRL-C will display current cursor position):
BB-VIEW-LCD7-01-00A0.dtbo \

Don't forget the trailing backslash....it is important. Now save and exit by doing CTRL-O, Enter, CTRL-X.
Change back to the linux-dev root folder:
> cd   ~/bb-view/linux-dev

Now issue the kernel rebuild command, this won't take very long at all:
> ./tools/rebuild.sh


Copy Kernel to BBB

The following instructions assume that you already have the Debian beta installed and booted up on the BBB.
The easiest way is to copy the files over the network, via the 'scp' command:
> scp   ~/bb-view/linux-dev/deploy/3.8.13-bone37.zImage   debian@192.168.7.2:/home/debian
Replace debian (both instances) with the username you are running on the BBB and 192.168.7.2 with the IP address of the BBB.

Now log into the BBB and copy the kernel image to the boot partition:
> ssh debian@192.168.7.2
bbb>  sudo cp 3.8.13-bone37.zImage   /boot/uboot/zImage

We need to do one more thing before the LCD will work. Since the cape doesn't have an EEPROM, we need to black-list the HDMI drivers and force-load the BB-VIEW drivers in the boot command file:
bbb>  sudo  nano  /boot/uboot/uEnv.txt

Find the "optargs" line and edit it to be:
optargs=capemgr.disable_partno=BB-BONELT-HDMI,BB-BONELT-HDMIN  capemgr.enable_partno=BB-VIEW-LCD7-01
Notice that the preceding "#" has been removed. You don't want to disable BB-BONE-EMMC-2G, or you won't be able to boot from eMMC.
Now save and exit by doing CTRL-O, Enter, CTRL-X.

Reboot the BBB and the LCD should now work....except the blue and red are reversed.

Fixing Red/Blue Color Swap

This is due to errata in the TI AM335x processor when switching between 16 and 24 bit video modes. To fix this, we must first find the name of our screen:
> ssh debian@192.168.7.2
bbb> cat  /var/log/Xorg.0.log  |  grep  screen
Mine was "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"

Now we edit our X configuration file:
bbb> sudo nano  /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf

and add a "Screen" section at the end of the file:
Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
        Monitor "Configured Monitor"
        Device "Configured Video Device"
        DefaultDepth 24
EndSection
Save and exit by doing CTRL-O, Enter, CTRL-X.
Reboot and enjoy!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Bare Metal Qt 5.2 on BeagleBone Black Ubuntu - Part 3

Overview

With Qt 5.2 working on the BeagleBone Black, created in Part 1 and Part 2, now it is time to compile a "Hello World" application. Assumptions:
  • You are using an Ubuntu x64 host for creating Qt applications
  • You have a Linaro toolchain located under /usr/local/linaro
  • You have a BeagleBone connect to your host PC via a LAN

Downloads

No need to compile our own Qt Creator, just download it:

Video Tutorials

Derek Molloy has three excellent videos about Qt on the BeagleBone. I suggest you start with these, as it will make following these instructions easier.

Setup Toolchain Environment

Open Qt Creator
Go to Tools -> Options

Add a new Device
Click on "Devices" from the list on the left
Click the "Add..." button on the upper right
Select Generic Linux Device
Click "Start Wizard" button
Enter "BBB - Ubuntu" for the name
Enter IP, and user information.
Click "Next" button
Click "Finish" button
Verify that the test connection was successful

Add a new Compiler
Click on the "Build & Run" item from the list on the left
Click on the "Compilers" tab
Click the "Add" drop down list button and select GCC
Change the name to "Linaro GCC"
Click the "Browse..." button next to the "Compiler path" field
Enter "/usr/local/linaro/bin/" into the filename field and click "Open"
Select "arm-linux-gnueabihf-g++" and click "Open" again
Click the "Apply" button

Add a new Debugger
Click on the "Debuggers" tab
Click the "Add" button
Enter "Linaro GDB" for the name
Click the "Browse..." button next to the Path field
Select "arm-linux-gnueabihf-gdb" and click "Open"
Click the "Apply" button

Add a new Qt Version
Click on the "Qt Versions" tab
Click the "Add..." button
Navigate to "/usr/local/qt-5.2/bin/qmake"
Click the "Open" button
Click the "Apply" button

Add a new Kit
Click on the "Kits" tab
Click the "Add" button
Change name to "BBB Kit"
Ensure that the device type is "Generic Linux Device"
Ensure that the device is "BBB - Ubuntu"
Select the "Linaro GCC" compiler from the Compiler drop down list button
Select the "Linaro GDB" debugger from the Debugger drop down list button
Select the "Qt 5.2.0 (qt-5.2)" version from the "Qt Version" drop down list button
Click the "Ok" button

Create a New Console Project

Under the Welcome page, Click the "New Project" button
Select "Applications" from the list on the left
Select "Qt Console Application"
Click the "Next" button
Enter "HelloWorld" in the name field
Change the target directory, if you like
Click on the "Next" button
Review the details and then click on the "Next" button
Click on the "Finish" button

Modify Auto-Generated Project

Edit main.cpp to look like this:

#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
   QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
   cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
   return a.exec();
}

This will build locally, but we want it to auto deploy to the BeagleBone. That's coming up next...

Create Deploy Configuration

Add the following three lines to HelloWorld.pro after the "TARGET=HelloWorld" line

   target.files = HelloWorld
   target.path = /home/ubuntu
INSTALLS += target

That's it, now Qt Creator will automatically deploy the files before a debug or run.


Install GDB Server

This is required in order to debug from Qt Creator running on our host PC. This only needs to be done once. Issue this command on the Beaglebone:

> sudo apt-get install gdbserver

Now you can press the Debug icon (looks like a play arrow) in Qt Creator and it will automatically scp the binary to the BeagleBone and start a remote GDB server session.

Create a GUI Project

Under the Welcome page, Click the "New Project" button
Select "Applications" from the list on the left
Select "Qt Gui Application"

Note: This option may not show up. If Qt Creator does not see the Qt 5.2 build as supporting GUI applications,  you can choose "Qt Widgets Application", but this may give different results. The other option is to install a distro version of Qt and make Qt Creator aware of it. This will make the Gui option visible in the project creation section. Nevermind, this is a difference between Qt Creator 2.8 and 3.0. The source generated, for either option, is identical.

Click the "Next" button
Enter "HelloWorldGUI" in the name field
Change the target directory, if you like
Click on the "Next" button
Review the details and then click on the "Next" button
Click on the "Finish" button

Modify Auto-Generated Project

Perform the same .pro file changes, as the console project, to deploy the project to the Beaglebone.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Bare Metal Qt 5.2 on BeagleBone Black Ubuntu - Part 2

Overview

For the impatient, I now have a precompiled tar of Qt 5.2.1 (for installation on a Beaglebone), see my blog post for more info...

Now that we have our development environment setup from Part 1, I will now guide you through the steps to compile Qt 5.2. This guide assumes the following:
  • That Ubuntu host machine is up-to-date
  • The host machine has the necessary utilities installed
  • Contains a folder, in the home directory, with the Qt source
  • The toolchain is installed under /usr/local/, which, for this guide, is in the linaro directory.

Downloads

Download these files, if you still need to flash Ubuntu onto the BeagleBone Black:

Create Device Configuration

Before we can call the Qt configuration script, we need to create a device configuration file so Qt knows how to generate the proper makefiles. Let's start by diving deeper into the Qt source folders.

> cd                                                             
> cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.2.0/qtbase/mkspecs/devices   
> ls                                                             

The directory list will reveal 17 devices that we can target with Qt, of which, one of those is linux-beagleboard-g++. Let's make a copy of that device directory and then modify the qmake.conf file for our toolchain.

> cp -r linux-beagleboard-g++ linux-beaglebone-g++               
> nano linux-beaglebone-g++/qmake.conf                           

We'll start by modifying the comment (line 2) to reflect this new file's target hardware, because good comments are important :)
# qmake configuration for the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black boards
 Next we need to change the compiler flags. The Linaro toolchain uses hardfloat so we need to change the "-mfloat-abi=softfp" option to "-mfloat-abi=hard" on line 29.
COMPILER_FLAGS = -march=armv7-a -mtune=cortex-a8 -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard
Save your changes and exit nano: CTRL-O, Enter, CTRL-X.

Create Platform Configuration

We need to create one more configuration before we call the Qt configuration script. Similar to a device configuration, we need to point to our platform compiler. In this case, I use the same linaro toolchain compiler. (I tried running the make without a -xplatform defined, because I thought it was not necessary....wrong!) 

Let's start by making a copy of an existing configuration file:

> cd                                                             
> cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.2.0/qtbase/mkspecs           
> cp -r linux-arm-gnueabi-g++ linux-linaro-gnueabihf-g++         

Now let's modify the qmake.conf file:

> nano linux-linaro-gnueabihf-g++/qmake.conf                     

Comments first (line 2):
# qmake configuration for building with Linaro hardfloat toolchain.
Next we need to modify all 8 lines of compiler paths to point to our Linaro toolchain. We can do this two ways:

  • By using the -device-options CROSS_COMPILE tag
  • By entering the full path
I chose the first option because I just copied the device configuration file, removed unused parts based on the linux-arm-gnueabi-g++ file (opengl, calls to device_config, etc), and modified the paths (changed ../../ to ../) to common headers. But I would recommend using the full path method because the configuration script may not enforce a "-device-option" tag for a "-xplatform" tag like it does for a "-device" tag.

So lets add the full path to qmake.conf. Change each line from this:
QMAKE_* = arm-linux-gnueabi-*
to
QMAKE_* = /usr/local/linaro/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-* 
In other words, leave the suffixes (gcc/g++/ar/objcopy/nm/strip) and options (cqs/-P) unchanged. As an example, the QMAKE_AR line (line 20) would become:
QMAKE_AR  = /usr/local/linaro/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-ar cqs
Once you have modified all 8 lines, save your changes and exit nano: CTRL-O, Enter, CTRL-X.

Configure Qt

Now we are ready to configure Qt. This is a relatively painless operation, but took me a while to discover which command line options were required. A lot of the options that were available in Qt 4 are no longer valid in Qt 5. We can ask the configuration script what options are available, but first we need to change our working directory to the build folder:

> cd                                                             
> cd qt-5.2-host                                                 
> ../qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.2.0/configure --help         

This outputs several pages of information, which you can study later; while you are waiting for Qt to compile. But for now, let's run configure with these parameters:

> ../qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.2.0/configure \              
   -v \                                                          
   -opensource \                                                 
   -confirm-license \                                            
   -prefix /usr/local/qt-5.2 \                                   
   -no-largefile \                                               
   -no-accessibility \                                           
   -qt-zlib \                                                    
   -no-gif \                                                     
   -qt-libpng \                                                  
   -qt-libjpeg \                                                 
   -no-nis \                                                     
   -no-cups \                                                    
   -xplatform linux-linaro-gnueabihf-g++ \                       
   -device linux-beaglebone-g++ \                                
   -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/local/linaro/bin/arm-linux-g
nueabihf-                                                        

Here is a brief description of each option

-v                         verbose output, which is helpful for problem solving
-opensource        build Qt as the opensource version
-confirm-license  automatically say "yes" to the LGPL license terms
-prefix                  the destination folder for binaries when a 'make' is performed
-no-largefile        no 4Gb file support
-no-accessibility  don't include accessibility, to save space?
-qt-zlib                 use the Qt version of zlib (instead of system)
-no-gif                 no GIF support
-qt-libpng            use the Qt version of libpng (instead of system)
-qt-libjpeg           use the Qt version of libjpeg (instead of system)
-no-nis                no Network Information Service support
-no-cups              no print support
-xplatform          defines which qmake.conf file to use for building libraries/plugins/examples
-device               defines which qmake.conf file, in the device folder, to use for building
-device-option    this is required, when -device is used, to point to the cross compiler binary

The reasoning behind why I chose these options is simple: these were the only options that worked from the  Building Qt for Embedded Linux web page., which is written for Qt 4.8.

Note: This is a work in progress, and as such the mouse, touchscreen, and GUI elements are not fully functional. Console applications seem to be working fine.

Building Qt

The configure script has compiled a host version of qmake, automatically detected what modules are available to build, determined what compiler optimizations are available,  and has created makefiles in the source folders. So now what? Well, that's easy, the configure script prints it out when it finishes:

> make -j3 

The -j3 option tells the compiler how many jobs (aka threads) to run simultaneously. Your number of CPU cores minus one is a good number for a virtual machine host. Number of cores plus one is a good number for native hosts.

My host PC has an Intel i7-3540M quad-core processor and 8 Gb of RAM. I created the VM with four cores and assigned 3 Gb of RAM. It finished the compile in about 20 to 30 minutes.

Tasks While Waiting

Since it is going to take a while, let's setup the BeagleBone Black with our embedded Ubuntu image. Follow the instructions on this site to create a card and update the BBB eMMC. It should only take a few minutes.

Once you have a working Ubuntu on the BBB, we need to remove an old version of Qt, 5.0.2

> sudo apt-get remove libqt5core5                                

This will clear up the /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf folder of the old Qt libraries.

We need a way to transfer files to the BeagleBone. This can be via SD or USB, but I prefer connecting it to my LAN and using 'scp'. You can find the IP address of the BeagleBone by issuing the following command:

> ifconfig                                                       

Under the eth0 adapter listing (or wlan0 if using WiFi) you will find the "inet addr" field. Write this down, or remember it, as this is what you use for the host name with the scp command:

> scp source_file username@host:remote_path

But that will have to wait until the build is done....

Post Build

When the build is done, Qt is ready to be installed. The following command will create the directory, specified by the -prefix target when you ran the configuration script, and fill it with binaries.

> make install                                                   

Now let's go explore the installation....

> cd /usr/local/qt-5.2                                           

Under this directory you will find eight more folders, of which a few are of interest:

  • bin - host binary of qmake, and other utilities
  • examples - target binaries for testing our build
  • lib - .so libraries for our target
  • plugins - our platform gui drivers


Copy Binaries to BeagleBone

My preferred method is to use 'scp' to copy the files over the LAN to the BeagleBone. The following commands will copy the entire Qt folder to your BeagleBone home folder:

> cd /usr/local                                                  
> scp -r qt-5.2 ubuntu@192.168.7.2:/home/ubuntu/qt-5.2           

Replace 'ubuntu' with the user account that you use on the BeagleBone. Replace '192.168.7.2' with the IP address of your BeagleBone. It will take a couple minutes, depending on your network speed. You can reduce the size, by about 1/3, if you only transfer the four folders: examples, lib, plugins, and qml.

The Qt libraries are now on the BeagleBone, but they are in the wrong directory. So, now we need to log into the BeagleBone, either via 'ssh' or through the console, and move them to the proper location:

bbb> sudo mv /home/ubuntu/qt-5.2 /usr/local                      

Test Installation

Everything should be good to go, so let's run a couple examples to verify it. First let's try a console application:

bbb> /usr/local/qt-5.2/examples/network/dnslookup www.google.com 

Now for a GUI application. I recommend calling this from a ssh session, because a local session will take over the screen and you will not be able to get it back until you reboot the BeagleBone.

bbb> /usr/local/qt-5.2/examples/gui/analogclock/analogclock      

Hmm, it doesn't work! Well, our device configuration, that we copied, sets the GUI to default to 'eglfs'. We don't have this plugin, because we didn't configure OpenGL support. So, to get around this, we need to explicitly define the platform. Add this to the previous command:

 -platform linuxfb                                               

Congratulations, you now have a working Qt 5.2 on your BeagleBone Black!

Conclusion

Part 3 shows how to configure Qt Creator for application development.

Sources

Here are some web pages that I used for inspiration.