you know my wiki and my repos? Most information was already there…in uboot-repo there is a hint it cannot be compiled with gcc5
There are also some other problems like ubuntu 18.4 uses netplan by default so config via interfaces-file is not possible till fallback to ifupdown
yes, i know your wiki. There is a lot of helpful information, thanks for that.
The informations for building an image from the scratch are a little bit “scattered”, imho, so i think it could be helpful to have all detailed informations about this topic in one single post.
I also found that the default build scripts in the official repository always create an image with the u-boot and a pre-loader programming the DRAM to 1333MHz, but there is also an unused pre-loader for the 1600MHz DRAM. I tried the 1600 version and it’s working fine, at least with my board (I don’t know if the kernel re-programs the DRAM speed later; in this case, the preloader version doesn’t matter).
One information is not in your wiki afaik: the problem with the u-boot building with gcc 5.5. If building with gcc 5.5, the pre-loader runs, but the board crashes when u-boot should be started. Do you have any clue why gcc5.5 cannot compile the bootloader correcly?
Ubuntu 18.04 is working as well. Did you try to use netplan for interface configuration? I think it should also work similar to the “old” interface version (the yaml config file has another format, of course). I’'l try that next.
I have no clue why this is happen
but i’ve added info here: https://github.com/frank-w/bpi-r2-uboot/blob/master/README.md
(I don’t know if i tried all gcc versions but also spend some time to it)
First mentioned here: How to extend the uboot-menu found no difference in build.log which causes this problem
But please do not spend to much time in uboot…some people working on mainline-support.
For netplan i did not found out how to bring eth0/eth1 up.
Btw. You use official 4.14…imho it is lacking some features and is older.
Thanks for the info. Btw: u-boot is also working with gcc 5.4, but not with gcc 5.5
I don’t spend more time in the bootloader thing. I’m just happy that it’s working now 
It was just important for me to build a system from the scratch so that I can configure/install only the software that I need. For my project, I just need the UART1, GPIO, USB and network interfaces of the board (and several software packages 
). This seems to work for me.
I’ll try your updated 4.14 kernel repository now.
thank you for the info, i’ve updated my bug-report on it: https://bugs.linaro.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3917 will update my uboot-repo also when i’m at home
as far i can see you create also the partitions and boot-block from scratch (i used that from existing image)…i will try to do this my own thanks for that
seems you overwrite it in step 6 (don’t know how bug the images are, but these are in the first 1M):
Write header blocks (get these files from the BPI-files repository on github):
gunzip -c BPI-R2-HEAD440-0k.img.gz | dd of=/dev/loop8 bs=1024 seek=0
gunzip -c BPI-R2-HEAD1-512b.img.gz | dd of=/dev/loop8 bs=512 seek=1
btw. your network-config seems wrong (all lan-ports with same subnet but different addresses)…i can’t imagine that this works 
this block also has broken formatting…and i suggest also a clean-up after installing the packages (apt-get clean + dd if=/dev/zero of=rootfs/file.dat;rm file.dat) to mae the image file smaller after packing
I checked these 2 images with a hex editor: the first is the header with the SDMMC_BOOT signature and the pointer to the 2nd header (0x00000200). It’s exactly 440 bytes long and obviously intended to overwrite the code section in the master boot record created with parted, but not the partition table (which is located at the end of the 512 byte MBR. after the 440 bytes).
The second image is the 2nd header with the signature BRLYT and the pointer to the preloader address (0x00000800), and some other values (i don’t know the meaning).
yes, it’s not working that way
ok, thx, good hint.
have separated the basic SD-Setup from the OS-Part and added to my wiki: https://www.fw-web.de/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r2:storage#sd-card
Perfect, thx.
Btw: I tried the updated 4.14 kernel from your repository with Ubuntu 18.04. Works like a charm 
I also added the bonding driver, that i need for my project (compiling is disabled by default).
If you have a working config please post it. I can also add bonding-driver as module
I just activated the compiling of the bonding driver as module.
To start the bonding, it’s required to load the module, either with modprobe or by adding it to a modules config, e.g. in /etc/modules-load.d/bonding.conf.
Also, the command echo +bond0 > /sys/class/net/bonding_masters must be executed to create the bonding device bond0.
I mean the complete configuration with definition of bonding ports.
Btw. In gcc-bug-report a bisect is requested. Can you try this?
Hello,
I’m following the steps you in order to create the image, i’m using virtual box with ubuntu 16.04, and gcc --version: gcc (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.11) 5.4.0 20160609, but i’ve got some problems at step2:
I tried this: sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-7 50 and i’ve got this message: update-alternatives: error: alternative path /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-7 does not exist
then I tried update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-5 100 and that is OK
but when I try the next code: update-alternatives --config arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc I’ve got the problem:
There is only one alternative in the group of links arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc (provee /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc): /usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-5
Nothing to configure.
Could you help me please?
You need to install gcc7 before defining it as alternative.
You need crosscompiler only if you want to build own kernel/uboot. For image creation you do not need this
Thanks for your response Frank,
I’m new with linux, I already installed gcc-7 with this: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test then sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test then sudo apt-get install gcc-7 g+±7 after that I’ve checked the version gcc-7 --version and it shows gcc-7 (Ubuntu 7.4.0-1ubuntu1~16.04~ppa1) 7.4.0 but when I look for it at /usr/bin/ there is not arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc-7, hence when I repeat the steps before I get the same problem. Could you please give me and idea? what i’m doing wrong?
Thanks
you installed gcc7 and not the gcc7-crosscompiler for arm(hf)
my ubuntu 18.4 workstation contains the following packages (for armhf)
gcc-8-arm-linux-gnueabihf
gcc-7-arm-linux-gnueabihf
gcc-6-arm-linux-gnueabihf
gcc-5-arm-linux-gnueabihf
i wonder where you read about changing the crosscompiler…imho you need not to do this…this was needed till the point where were problems with gcc7, but these should be fixed…so just install the meta-package gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf and run build.sh
ok, this instructions are not from me and using official 4.14 repo…
for compiling kernel just use my repo:
and follow instructions in Readme there…you can compile with gcc 7 and you have an actual kernel (4.14.103 or maybe 4.19.25)
I am confused with these 4 lines of command R2-Head0k seems like zeros for 1M but what about the head1-512b?
Next the preloader is loaded onthe same boot partition from block 2 and then the Uboot is loaded.
But when I flashed the ubuntu image I didnt see the uboot in its boot partition.
What I am using for the Khadas Vim device is below commands
#partition with boot and root
parted -s $LDEV mklabel msdos 1> /dev/null 2>&1
#parted -s $LDEV mkpart primary fat32 0% 100M 1> /dev/null 2>&1
parted -s $LDEV mkpart primary fat16 4M 128M 1> /dev/null 2>&1
START=`cat /sys/block/$DEV/${DEV}p1/start`
SIZE=`cat /sys/block/$DEV/${DEV}p1/size`
END_SECTOR=$(expr $START + $SIZE)
parted -s $LDEV mkpart primary ext4 "${END_SECTOR}s" 100% 1> /dev/null 2>&1
partprobe $LDEV 1> /dev/null 2>&1
mkfs.vfat "${LDEV}p1" -n BOOT 1> /dev/null 2>&1
mkfs.ext4 -O ^metadata_csum,^64bit ${LDEV}p2 -L ROOTFS 1> /dev/null 2>&1
#copy rootfs contents over to the FS
mkdir -p $TMPDIR/root
mkdir -p $TMPDIR/boot
mount ${LDEV}p1 $TMPDIR/boot
mount ${LDEV}p2 $TMPDIR/root
cp -ra $ROOTFS_IMG/rootfs_$ARCH/* $TMPDIR/root/
mv $TMPDIR/root/boot/* $TMPDIR/boot
#clean up
umount $TMPDIR/root
umount $TMPDIR/boot
losetup -d $LDEV 1> /dev/null 2>&1
rm -r $TMPDIR/root $TMPDIR/boot
partprobe $LDEV 1> /dev/null 2>&1
And if any device which needs a uboot with header and first block to be clear then We use the following.
#Clear first 8mb
dd if=/dev/zero of=${LDEV} bs=1M count=8 1> /dev/null 2>&1
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=${LDEV} bs=1 count=444 1> /dev/null 2>&1
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/u-boot.bin.sd.bin of=${LDEV} bs=512 skip=1 seek=1 1> /dev/null 2>&1
@frank-w You advice will be helpful
Thanks
BPI-R2-HEAD440-0k.img.gz is 65 bytes
BPI-R2-HEAD1-512b.img.gz is 82 bytes
https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-files/tree/master/SD/100MB
how do you get the information about 1M?
why do you want to clear the first 8M? you can also simply write new uboot over the old like my uboot/build.sh does
at offset 1M starts user-data-area where my uboot saves uboots environment (8k)
see partition-picture https://wiki.fw-web.de/doku.php?id=en/bpi-r2/storage
so you need only to clear first 1M for clearing boot-data and the following 8k to erase environment, remember that at the end of the first 512 byte your partitiontable is saved…so its better to clear beginning on 512byte
Ok I will follow your instruction mentioned on your wiki page. So using that I understand that i need to dd 4 lines to the boot partition and those will be the following for my pkgbuild.
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/BPI-R2-HEAD440-0k.img of=${LDEV} bs=1024 seek=0
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/BPI-R2-HEAD1-512b.img of=${LDEV} bs=512 seek=1
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/BPI-R2-preloader-DDR1600-20190722-2k.img of=${LDEV} bs=1k seek=2
dd if=$TMPDIR/boot/u-boot.bin of=${LDEV} bs=1k seek=320
I hope this will work. I will copy these files in the boot directory of rootfs from where they will be dd’ed to the boot partition when the pkgbuild is run.
Next I will also use the uEnv.txt to be copied to the boot partition from the boot directory when i build the kernel and move the kernel img as uImage to boot partition. Is this second part of uEnv.txt and uImage correct? From what I have observed from the existing ubuntu img.
Third rootfs will be generated from manjaro linux along with the kernel from your branch.
please do not copy any files to /boot in rootfs because it is the mountpoint for boot-partition and boot will fail if it is not empty. where do you call pkgbuild?
if you do not change filename of kernel (leave uImage and replace the old) you do not need to create a uEnv.txt, only if the name changes or you want to change/extend other vars in the environment. uEnv.txt/uImage needs to be located in the folder you’ve seen above. if you add a new uImage without replacing the old, say uImage_5.3 you create a uEnv.txt and add this at the end (if it exists or you copy an existing file):
kernel=uImage_5.3
btw. instead of copying the 4 files you can simply copy the first 1M from my image to yours…re-read partition table, create filesystems and add kernel+rootfs+modules
Yes boot directory in rootfs will be empty as it is cleaned after using its files What I used to do is compile kernel along with files needed for boot partition using pkgbuild and then build the whole manjaro linux using manjaro-arm-tool official tool this gives us manjaro img to be flashed on media for booting.
No will go with the standard practice of using uImage and will not be changing the name instead will compile kernel separately for every build.
Yes this I can use for testing if the first method fails but to maintain the device with updates I think the first method is stable. Is that correct?