Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-02-20 | 
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Having used OpenEmbedded for a number of Embedded Linux projects over the past 5 years, it is interesting watching new users come on board. The most recent announcement came from Koan that the KaeilOS distribution will be joining the OpenEmbedded project. In the announcement, they summed up my thoughts well: We at KOAN wanted to [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-28 | 3 Comments to Read
The Socketcan test applications and utilities are now available in OpenEmbedded. The socketcan kernel modules already exist in OE. To build and deploy: get the latest version of OE metadata bitbake socketcan-utils-test scp <oedir>/build/angstrom-2008.1/tmp/deploy/glibc/ipk/<machine>/socketcan-utils-test_0.0+svnr917-r0_armv5te.ipk root@<target IP address>: And then on the target system: opkg install socketcan-utils-test_0.0+svnr917-r0_armv5te.ipk opkg files socketcan-utils-test /usr/bin/tst_bcm_rx_sendto /usr/bin/tst_bcm_tx_sendto /usr/bin/canlogserver /usr/bin/tst_raw_filter /usr/bin/tst_raw /usr/bin/isotpsniffer [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-26 | 11 Comments to Read
I just added a recipe to OpenEmbedded to build the Socketcan kernel modules from the socketcan SVN. So if you are using the latest OpenEmbedded metadata, you can: bitbake socketcan-modules scp <oedir>/build/angstrom-2008.1/tmp/deploy/glibc/ipk/<machine>/socketcan-modules_0.0+svnr917-r0_cm-x270.ipk root@<target IP address>: and then on the target system: opkg install socketcan-modules_0.0+svnr917-r0_cm-x270.ipk opkg files socketcan-modules Package socketcan-modules (0.0+svnr917-r0) is installed on root and [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-10 | Be the First to Comment
I recently added Mono 2.2 RC1 to OpenEmbedded. The last usable version of Mono in Openembedded was 1.2.6, so this is a big step up. Lots of interesting things have been happening since then (like Full Static Compilation) that continue to make Mono interesting for embedded. There is still plenty to do yet such as [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-09 | Be the First to Comment
Recently the OpenEmbedded project has switched to the Git version control system. This is good news for many reasons. The obvious reasons are Git is faster than Monotone, handles branching better, has lots of nice features, larger user base, etc. Monotone has served us well, but as new tools become available, it is time to [...]
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The Linux input layer has made a lot of progress in recent years. When writing a new input driver (such as keyboard, trackball, etc), it is useful to be able to monitor input events using a test application. This article describes two ways to accomplish this using kernel input debugging, and the evtest utility. kernel [...]
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The kernel support in OpenEmbedded for the Compulab cm-x270 has been updated to version 2.6.24. The 2.6.24 kernel opens up several possibilities including better real time and high resolution timer functionality, an improved SD Card driver, and a full SDIO stack with support for SDIO Wifi devices. Also included is a patch to set the [...]
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I recently updated the Mono recipes in OpenEmbedded to include the Mono 1.2.6 version. Several critical bugs that were present in 1.2.5 have been fixed, and its looking very good. More on this later …
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Update: Michael Dominic K. has kindly provided feedback on this article and has some additional points about Mono and embedded systems. Mono has included support for ARM systems for some time, but with the release of Mono 1.2.6, and its inclusion in OpenEmbedded, it is now practical and easy to build and run C# applications [...]
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Updated 2.6.23 kernel patches for the Compulab cm-x270 are now available in OpenEmbedded: http://www.openembedded.org/filebrowser/org.openembedded.dev/packages/linux/linux-2.6.23/cm-x270 The cm-x270 support in OpenEmbedded has undergone a lot of clean-up in recent weeks. Now is a good time to give OpenEmbedded a try if you need a full featured Linux distribution for the cm-x270.
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There are quite a few people using (or would like to use) OpenEmbedded on the Compulab cm-x270. The cm-x270 is a high performance, low cost computer module that can be used with a custom baseboard in embedded systems (see http://bec-systems.com/web/content/view/62/9/ for a review). I get a lot of questions on how to load OpenEmbedded on [...]
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If you are having trouble mounting a JFFS2 file system on a Compulab cm-x270 module, you may have a device that has a NAND flash with 16KiB eraseblocks. All of the devices I have personally used to date have had 128KiB eraseblocks, but I just helped a cm-x270 user through some flash issues and after [...]
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Original article published 2007-10-04 As of today, the Mono build in OpenEmbedded is working pretty well. Mono support for ARM and other embedded architectures should add some interesting capabilities for embedded Linux devices. Having written a number of large embedded Linux applications, I can really appreciate the advantages of high level languages for exception handling. [...]
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Update 2007-10-14: use IMAGE_INSTALL in image recipe Update 2007-10-22: a few corrections, added full path for include and comments Update 2010-06-07: use recipes instead of packages directory As more and more OpenMoko developers are coming on-line, it is becoming obvious that my previous post (http://bec-systems.com/web/content/view/59/9/) about adding packages to OpenEmbedded could use some improvements. This [...]
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This is the first in a multi-part series on the OpenEmbedded development environment. This and subsequent articles will provide an introduction to OpenEmbedded, why to use it, how it works, and will provide examples of how BEC has used OE in various projects. Part 1 — Why do we need OpenEmbedded? This article discusses some [...]