Hello FS Support,
Congratulations for finally getting the V1.0 released.
I hope the vacation you metntioned earlier is not lost, only postponed.
But I can't find the readme.txt either.
Any hint?
Regards,
HoBa
Hello FS Support,
Congratulations for finally getting the V1.0 released.
I hope the vacation you metntioned earlier is not lost, only postponed.
But I can't find the readme.txt either.
Any hint?
Regards,
HoBa
See the post before yours. The file is now online.
Hi,
the installation of linux worked without any problems, thanks a lot for your work.
Best regards
Daniel
We have uploaded armStoneA8 V1.1 to our server. This time we have made one single armStoneA8-V1.1.tar.bz2 archive so that you don't need to download several files one by one. Extract the file with
This will create a subdirectory armStoneA8-V1.1 with all the files in it. Please read the file README.txt that you'll find there. It shows how to install and use everything.
Release Notes for armStoneA8 V1.1
This release is a maintenance release, targeted to also support the premium version of armStoneA8 (fully equipped with all hardare options) and to make the installation procedure easier. If you're using a Micro SD card, most of the installation is going automatically. It also fixes some issues from V1.0.
NBoot (V14) (02.05.2012)
Changes in V14
Changes in V13
armStoneA8 V1.1 (22.05.2012, based on u-boot-2011.12)
This is another interim release targeted to armStoneA8 only (PicoMOD6 and PicoCOM3 won't work).
Linux Kernel armStoneA8 V1.1 (22.05.2012, based on linux-3.3.7)
BuildRoot armStoneA8 V1.1 (22.05.2012, based on buildroot-2012.02)
Toolchain
We have built a completely new toolchain fs-toolchain-4.6.3-armv6-vfp
Your F&S Support Team
Hi Team,
Is there an estimation when the 1.2 version will be released?
In the roadmap end of September was mentioned.
We are working heavily on a V2.0 release, but it is still a few weeks away. Let me explain why.
Our basic plan for the future in general is to have a combined F&S Linux release for all of our boards. So no separate release for each of our boards anymore, but a general release that supports all of our boards in one single code base. No different U-Boot versions anymore, no different kernel version anymore, no different BuildRoot versions anymore, just one version that works for all. This drastically reduces the overhead that has to be done for parallel releases, documentation, examples, etc. In fact the whole system gets more manageable. Of course we can't do this in one giant step, so this is what we had planned a few months ago.
- V1.2 as another bugfix release (armStoneA8 only)
- V2.0 that basically supports different F&S boards with the same code base (starting with armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A)
- V2.x as bugfix releases, also bringing more of our boards in line with this new generic release system (e.g. PicoMOD6, PicoCOM3, PicoCOM4)
- V3.0 that uses device trees
- V3.x as bugfix releases, add new boards and different architectures (e.g. QBlissA9)
Because we already had good-working patches here in the forum for most of the reported bugs, we decided to skip V1.2 and go directly to V2.0, because V1.2 would only include these fixes and a release always takes quite a lot of time that we could invest in V2.0 instead. In addition we already had first support for PicoMOD7A and NetDCU14, so we didn't want to have a separate release for armStoneA8 alone anymore.
One of our new features of V2.0 should also be a way to configure the devices more flexible in U-Boot, without having to recompile the Kernel every time. This seemed to be a rather small change at a first glance, but when actually trying to implement this, it showed that we would have to write quite some stuff completely anew, that duplicates stuff that will automatically be available when switching over to device trees. So we had a look at device trees and decided to go for them right now, i.e. to merge V2.x and V3.x as a "new" V2.0.
By the way, what are "device trees"? This is the new way of Linux to handle different hardware platforms with a single binary. It is a rather new development thread in Linux, started about a year ago in the ARM branch. On x86, there is a well defined set of periphery within the CPU itself that is already activated by the BIOS. Everything else is connected via standardized interfaces, e.g. PCI or PCI-Express. However on the ARM architecture, nearly the complete set of periphery is integrated with the CPU on one chip. This is why such a chip is not called CPU anymore, but SOC (System-on-chip). It is the result of the miniaturization in the world of embedded systems and smartphones, where the ARM architecture is dominating.
Unfortunately every SOC manufacturer does this integration differently and also used to have its own Linux code to support this. This resulted in an obfuscating jungle of incompatible code in the kernel that grew and grew and grew. To stop this insanity, several months ago some kernel developers introduced the concept of device trees. This is a data structure, independent of the Linux kernel binary, that describes the underlying hardware. That means it contains all information about the SOC periphery, how it is configured on a specific platform and what additional hardware is also used on this platform. So the hardware configuration is not part of the Linux kernel configuration anymore, it is a separate information provided by the device itself, for example supplied by the bootloader. This allows to have a single kernel binary, with many features and hardware drivers enabled, that is suited for several platforms on one hand, and one device tree structure for each of these platforms describing the actual local configuration on the other hand.
This is also well-suited for different device configurations. For example if a board is available with or without support for a second LAN, you only have to provide two different device trees for these two version, but can keep the same kernel. (In fact these two configurations would only be two different branches within the same device tree, so it's even more straightforward.) The ultimate goal is to have one single universal ARM kernel that can drive *all* ARM platforms out there in the world, as long as they provide such a local device tree.
As you can guess this causes some major reorganizations within the Linux kernel at the moment. For example all device drivers have to be enhanced to allow fetching their configuration not only from the kernel kconfig system (that you call with make menuconfig), but also from the device tree system. Of course this is still work in progress. Some architectures are already completely done, some are switching over to this new mechanism step by step right now, and some SOCs are not supported at all, yet. To get all this stuff going as smoothly as possible, we need to update to the most recent versions of U-Boot, Kernel and BuildRoot first to get the best support for device trees and the most up-to-date status for the device drivers as possible.
So our new plan is this:
- V2.0 that supports different F&S boards with the same code base *and* that uses device trees
- V2.1 to add display configuration in U-Boot
- V2.x as bugfix releases
Of course we are trying to get as much as possible running with V2.0 already. This is the current status:
U-Boot:
- update to 2012.07
- device tree support
- support for NetDCU14 and PicoMOD7A
- support for PicoMOD6 and PicoCOM3
- Improved FAT support (in progress)
Kernel:
- update to 3.6 (in progress)
- support for NetDCU14 and PicoMOD7A
- improved touch driver (in progress)
BuildRoot:
- update to 2012.08
- support for NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A, PicoCOM4
- improved F&S board support (in progress)
For the first V2.0 release we'll start with combined sources for armStoneA8, PicoMOD7A and NetDCU14 (boards based on Samsung S5PV210). PicoMOD6, PicoCOM3 (based on Samsung S3C6410), PicoCOM4 (based on Samsung S3C2416) and QBlissA9 (based on Freescale i.MX6) will follow. Believe me that there are quite a few things to be changed below the surface to get all these architectures combined as a single release in the future. So please be a little more patient with us.
Your F&S Support Team
Multi-Platform Linux V2.0
We have uploaded a new Linux version to our server. This is the first Multi-Platform Linux Release that supports several boards at the same time. At the moment these are the boards based on Samsung S5PV210 SoC: armStoneA8, NetDCU14 and PicoMOD7a. In the future more boards and also different architectures will be added to this Multi-Platform Release.
In difference to my last message, this is not the version with device tree support yet. We had quite a lot of urgent requests for Linux on NetDCU14 and PicoMOD7A and therefore decided to revert to our previous release schedule, where V2.0 brings the multi-platform support and a later V3.0 release will bring device tree support. It would have taken too long to do this all in one step.
In the download area on our website you'll find two tar archives:
multiplatform-linux-f+s-V2.0.tar.bz2
This is the main release itself containing all sources, the binary images, the documentation and the toolchain.
sd-card-V2.0.tar.bz2
If you copy the contents of this archive to an SD card, you can install our precompiled standard system in a very straightforward and comfortable way on the board. The SD card archive is meant for people who just want to try a release first without having to download the quite large main archive. Its content is also contained in the main release archive, so if you want to download the main archive anyway, you don't need to bother with the SD card archive.
These tar archives are compressed with bzip2. So to see the files, you first have to unpack the archives
This will create a directory multiplatform-linux-f+s-V2.0 that contains all the files of the release.
Please read the file doc/MultiPlatform-Linux-FirstSteps.pdf. It lists the meaning of all files and shows how to install and use everything.
Release Notes for Multi-Platform Linux V2.0
This is a major release with lots of changes. It is the first release that supports several boards at once. The boards that are supported through all levels (NBoot, U-Boot, Linux Kernel, BuildRoot) are:
armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A
Please note that you have to update NBoot first to be able to use the automatic installation process described in the FirstSteps document.
Here is a list of the most noticeable changes in this release.
NBootV210 (V18) (21.11.2012)
Supported boards: armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A
Changes in V18
Changes in V17
Changes in V16
Changes in V15
U-Boot V2.0 (20.11.2012, based on u-boot-2012.07)
Supported boards: PicoMOD6, PicoCOM3, armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A
Linux Kernel V2.0 (22.11.2012, based on linux-3.3.7)
Supported boards: armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A
BuildRoot V2.0 (22.11.2012, based on buildroot-2012.08)
Supported Boards: armStoneA8, NetDCU14, PicoMOD7A, PicoCOM4
Toolchain
The toolchain remained unchanged
Documentation
Your F&S Support Team
From now on we will report information that is common for all supported boards of Multi-Platform Linux in the common Linux section Linux and Applications. That's bugs, announcements and general information. So if you are looking for solutions to your problems, please also have a look there. Only things that are really armStoneA8 specific are still reported here in this section.
If you're opening a new topic, please try to use the appropriate section, too. If you can't determine if it is board specific or not, better post it here in the board specific section. If this proves to be wrong and it is a more generic issue, don't bother, we will move the topic to the common section.
Thanks.
Your F&S Support Team