In this session we will walk-through the essential software components that make the Board Suppport Package (BSP) for a hardware platform. We will demonstrate our work by booting PICO-IMX8M evaluation Kit.

In order to boot a hardware platform and runs applications on Linux we need the following software components:

• uboot (uboot.bin)
• Linux kernel image (Image)
• Device tree blob (dtb)
• Kernel Modules
• rootfs image

The virtual machine provided by NXP should have all the software already downloaded including all the prerequisites. In this lab we will use a prebuild uboot and rootfs image.

• follow slides at session 1

You can use virtual machine setup or native Linux setup.

To connect to the Linux running inside the virtual machine you can use:

ssh -p 3022 student@localhost

Your work directory should look like this.

$ tree -L 2 /home/student/work/
├── nss-linux                  # Linux kernel source code
├── images                     # prebuild binaries
│   ├── flash.bin
│   ├── Image
│   ├── imx8mq-pico-pi.dtb
│   └── rootfs.ext2
└── scripts                    # several scripts to help with compilation and booting
    ├── modules_install.sh
    ├── setenv.sh
    ├── uuu
    └── uuu_script

$ source ~/work/scripts/setenv.sh
$ cd ~/work/nss-linux
$ make tn_imx8_defconfig
$ make -j8

Successful compilation will create the following binaries:

• arch/arm64/boot/Image - this is the resulting Linux kernel image
• arch/arm64/boot/dts/freescale/imx8mq-pico-pi.dtb - device tree blob files
• a set of Linux kernel modules (*.ko) scattered around the Linux kernel working tree.

We also have prebuild binaries for Image and imx8mq-pico-pi.dtb found under ~/work/images/ directory to be used as a backup.

Connect the PICO-PI-IMX8M to your laptop using the two USB cables provided as described on Technexion webpage.

1. Yellow box: debug console cable
2. Red box: power cable (USB Type C)
3. Magent box: boot configuration jumper location.

Make sure the board is in Serial Download Mode. Jumper location should be set as follows:

.

Now, we are ready to boot the board. Open two consoles:

Console #1

$ minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB0

Console #2

# sudo ~/work/scripts/uuu ~/work/scripts/uuu_script

And then hit ''Reset' button on the board.