Building Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome

Introduction

This article provides step-by-step instructions for building a Ubntu Gnome image with TechNexion's Yocto BSP, which supports the i.MX series of processors.

System Requirements

Building an image from source with Yocto requires a host with the following:

• 8GB RAM (more is better)
• 4 Core processor
• 200 GB storage

If less memory is used, then some additional swap space may be needed. Inadequate memory may result slow builds and random build errors.

In addition, the host must be connected to a network and have access to the Internet so that all source code and tools may be downloaded.

Set up build environment on host PC:

The build environment is tested under Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04.

Install required packages:

# First update the host package list
sudo apt-get update

# Install necessary packages
sudo apt-get install gawk wget git git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib build-essential \
chrpath socat cpio python python3 python3-pip python3-pexpect \
python3-git python3-jinja2 libegl1-mesa pylint3 rsync bc bison \
xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping libsdl1.2-dev xterm \
language-pack-en coreutils texi2html file docbook-utils \
python-pysqlite2 help2man desktop-file-utils \
libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mercurial autoconf automake \
groff curl lzop asciidoc u-boot-tools libreoffice-writer \
sshpass ssh-askpass zip xz-utils kpartx vim screen

Install the Repo Tool

There are many respositories required. Google's repo tool is used to manage this.

mkdir ~/bin
curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Download the BSP source

PATH=${PATH}:~/bin
mkdir tn_ubuntu
cd tn_ubuntu

Next, initialize the repositories based on the release you wish to build:

Fetch the source code:

repo sync -j8

Create build environment

There are several options regarding the build environment that you can use.

Prepare WIFI/BT firmware

You may optionally choose to add WIFI/BT firmware to the build. To do this, add the argument "WIFI_FIRMWARE=y" in during BSP setup. Please refer to following for an explanation of other BSP initialization options.

Configurations for setup script

MACHINE is the target of build. It usually corresponds to the name of SOM or SBC.
For more information, please check the file under “sources/meta-tn-imx-bsp/conf/machine”.

DISTRO identifies the Yocto distribution and is the new way to configure for any backends.

“-b” specify the build directory.

BASEBOARD is the baseboard type.

WIFI_MODULE is to choose what kind of WLAN is on board. (qca/brcm/ath-pci)

WIFI_FIRMWARE is to choose to add WLAN firmware files in target rootfs or not. (y/all)

Build configurations for supported hardware

The following is a list of valid options for MACHINE based on the hardware.

The following is a list of valid options for DISTRO.

WIFI_MODULE

The following is a list of valid options for WIFI_MODULE. This specifies the 'wifi_module' variable in uEnv.txt).

DISPLAY

The following is a list of valid options for DISPLAY. This parameter only works on i.MX6 and i.MX8M. This specifies the displayinfo variable in uEnv.txt.

-b : Specify the build directory name

Choosing Yocto target image

The following is a list of target image options:

Example BSP Setup and Build Commands for Supported Targets

Build Yocto for TechNexion target platform.

For EDM-G-IMX8MM

Xwayland image:

WIFI_FIRMWARE=y DISTRO=imx-desktop-xwayland MACHINE=edm-g-imx8mm source tn-setup-release.sh -b build-desktop-edm-g-imx8mm

bitbake imx-image-full

For EDM-G-IMX8MN

Xwayland image:

WIFI_FIRMWARE=y DISTRO=imx-desktop-xwayland MACHINE=edm-g-imx8mn source tn-setup-release.sh -b build-desktop-edm-g-imx8mn

bitbake fimx-image-full

For EDM-G-IMX8MP

Xwayland image:

WIFI_FIRMWARE=y DISTRO=imx-desktop-xwayland MACHINE=edm-g-imx8mp source tn-setup-release.sh -b build-desktop-edm-g-imx8mp

bitbake imx-image-full

For PICO-IMX8MM

Xwayland image:

WIFI_FIRMWARE=y DISTRO=imx-desktop-xwayland MACHINE=pico-imx8mm source tn-setup-release.sh -b build-desktop-pico-imx8mm

bitbake imx-image-full

For PICO-IMX8MQ

Xwayland image:

WIFI_FIRMWARE=y DISTRO=imx-desktop-xwayland MACHINE=pico-imx8mq source tn-setup-release.sh -b build-desktop-pico-imx8mq

bitbake imx-image-full

Image Deployment

When build completes, the generated release image is under “{MACHINE}”:

To decompress the .bz2:

bzip2 -fdk imx-image-desktop-XXX.rootfs.wic.bz2 "fsl-image-XXX.rootfs.wic"

or use bmaptool to flash fsl-image-XXX.rootfs.wic.bz2 directly.

To deploy the image to your board, please follow the instructions for loading software into the flash or microSD card of your development kit.

Tutorial Video

We have put together a video showing this process, including download the image, into a PICO-IMX8M-MINI.