MaaxBoard Debian Image - Tips, Add-Ins, and Fixes

Compiling modules/drivers for kernel 4.14.78

Previously I shared serial related drivers that I compiled for my needs. You may come across support that's missing for your needs, so I thought I'd share how you can compile just what you need which will also lead you on the path of even building your own custom kernel if you choose.

EDIT: I'm somehow just now seeing this... the embest dropbox has a few more details than the resource page: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ft2o8olt88vm9mi/AAA6RN54yQq6J41JgTphgCDda/01Doc/UM?dl=0&preview=MaaXBoard-Linux-Development_Guide-V1.0-EN.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

^^Use that if you're compiling from a host machine.

Requirements

• Copy of the v1.1.1r10 source.
• packages for compiling

Steps

1. It's actually easiest to build directly from the maaxboard unless you're proficient in correctly cross compiling from another host. If you choose to build from the maaxboard, go ahead and load the base shipped image to a dedicated SD so you're not working from within your current setup
2. Once the maaxboard is up, ssh as root with the default pass avnet
3. Fix timedate issues first mentioned HERE
4. Run apt-update
5. Install wget & unrar: apt-get install wget unrar
6. Install tools for building: apt-get install build-essential libncurses5-dev gcc libssl-dev bc
7. For simplicity sake, make sure you're in /root: cd /root
8. Now let's pull the source RAR from the dropbox link. Reason I suggest this is there is a higher risk of corruption if you're downloading, unpacking, uploading, unpacking... 1 hop directly to the device is best: wget https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ft2o8olt88vm9mi/AABd76gFyXGhd-cGU8RDM89la/02Linux/01LinuxSourceCode/MaaXBoard-LinuxSourceCode…
9. Unrar the file: unrar e rarfile.rar
10. Extract linux_4.14.78_develop_3d21737092eb.tar.gz: tar -zxvf tarfile.tar.gz (I can't remember if this dumps to a tar file next, if so extract it with tar xvf file.tar)
11. You should now have a linux directory: cd linux

This is the directory you'll want to run all the following commands from. At this point you could build your own config, but it's best to have a starting point that you know is compatible... which is why we will load the config stored in the source directory /root/linux/arch/arm64/configs/em-sbc-imx8m_defconfig <-- copy this path since you'll need it shortly.

1. Now we will load the ncurses menu to simplify selecting the tweaks we want to make. Run: make menuconfig
2. In the menu you'll notice a "load" option at the bottom. Select that and load the config we referenced above
3. Now you're editing the em-sbc-imx8m_defconfig. I'll build ftdi serial support in this example, but you can modify the selection process to your needs.
4. In my case since I'm adding in ftdi serial support I navigate to Device Drivers -> USB Support -> Enable USB Serial Peripheral Support.
5. Now I go into the USB Serial Peripheral Support menu and flag USB Serial Generic Support and FTDI as Modules.
6. Select save from the bottom menu and simply save as ".config" so you don't overwrite the default config.

Now rather than building the entire kernel for this purpose, we only want to build the modules we've selected. We will need to specify a path in our make command and you can almost guess the path based on the menu selections we made, but you can also run: find . -name "ftdi*" to find the location of the source & header files. In this case, the path is drivers/usb/serial

1. Compile the module: make -C . M=path (this will compile all modules in the path)

Once completed you should now have .ko files in the same path which are the compiled modules. The last thing to do is copy them to the active module path and load them.

1. Run: cp path/to/.ko /lib/modules/4.14.78/kernel/drivers/usb/serial
2. Probe/Load new modules: depmod

Success!

Compiling modules/drivers for kernel 4.14.78

Previously I shared serial related drivers that I compiled for my needs. You may come across support that's missing for your needs, so I thought I'd share how you can compile just what you need which will also lead you on the path of even building your own custom kernel if you choose.

EDIT: I'm somehow just now seeing this... the embest dropbox has a few more details than the resource page: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ft2o8olt88vm9mi/AAA6RN54yQq6J41JgTphgCDda/01Doc/UM?dl=0&preview=MaaXBoard-Linux-Development_Guide-V1.0-EN.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

^^Use that if you're compiling from a host machine.

Requirements

• Copy of the v1.1.1r10 source.
• packages for compiling

Steps

1. It's actually easiest to build directly from the maaxboard unless you're proficient in correctly cross compiling from another host. If you choose to build from the maaxboard, go ahead and load the base shipped image to a dedicated SD so you're not working from within your current setup
2. Once the maaxboard is up, ssh as root with the default pass avnet
3. Fix timedate issues first mentioned HERE
4. Run apt-update
5. Install wget & unrar: apt-get install wget unrar
6. Install tools for building: apt-get install build-essential libncurses5-dev gcc libssl-dev bc
7. For simplicity sake, make sure you're in /root: cd /root
8. Now let's pull the source RAR from the dropbox link. Reason I suggest this is there is a higher risk of corruption if you're downloading, unpacking, uploading, unpacking... 1 hop directly to the device is best: wget https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ft2o8olt88vm9mi/AABd76gFyXGhd-cGU8RDM89la/02Linux/01LinuxSourceCode/MaaXBoard-LinuxSourceCode…
9. Unrar the file: unrar e rarfile.rar
10. Extract linux_4.14.78_develop_3d21737092eb.tar.gz: tar -zxvf tarfile.tar.gz (I can't remember if this dumps to a tar file next, if so extract it with tar xvf file.tar)
11. You should now have a linux directory: cd linux

This is the directory you'll want to run all the following commands from. At this point you could build your own config, but it's best to have a starting point that you know is compatible... which is why we will load the config stored in the source directory /root/linux/arch/arm64/configs/em-sbc-imx8m_defconfig <-- copy this path since you'll need it shortly.

1. Now we will load the ncurses menu to simplify selecting the tweaks we want to make. Run: make menuconfig
2. In the menu you'll notice a "load" option at the bottom. Select that and load the config we referenced above
3. Now you're editing the em-sbc-imx8m_defconfig. I'll build ftdi serial support in this example, but you can modify the selection process to your needs.
4. In my case since I'm adding in ftdi serial support I navigate to Device Drivers -> USB Support -> Enable USB Serial Peripheral Support.
5. Now I go into the USB Serial Peripheral Support menu and flag USB Serial Generic Support and FTDI as Modules.
6. Select save from the bottom menu and simply save as ".config" so you don't overwrite the default config.

Now rather than building the entire kernel for this purpose, we only want to build the modules we've selected. We will need to specify a path in our make command and you can almost guess the path based on the menu selections we made, but you can also run: find . -name "ftdi*" to find the location of the source & header files. In this case, the path is drivers/usb/serial

1. Compile the module: make -C . M=path (this will compile all modules in the path)

Once completed you should now have .ko files in the same path which are the compiled modules. The last thing to do is copy them to the active module path and load them.

1. Run: cp path/to/.ko /lib/modules/4.14.78/kernel/drivers/usb/serial
2. Probe/Load new modules: depmod

Success!

Thanks for this tutorial, I only have a small comment: I could only get it to work by adding a few steps after your step 6 (saving the config):

make modules

make prepare_modules

After that, I was able to build the correct modules.