Android preinstalled,and thats it ? whathappens do www.riotboard.org ?

Good question.  I can't find it either.  If you do find Ubuntu and get it working, please let us know how well it performs.

Follow the directions in Section 5.1 of the Riot User Manual for getting and putting Linux on the board and that should work.

anthony_h wrote:

 

Follow the directions in Section 5.1 of the Riot User Manual for getting and putting Linux on the board and that should work.

From what I can tell, Section 5.1 only builds the software for Android, i.e., u-boot, Linux kernel image, and Android file system.  I don't see where it tells you how to build a Ubuntu file system.  Plus, a lot of us don't want to build GNU/Linux -- we'd rather download a pre-built u-boot + kernel + file system.

Chapters 3 and 4 say that you can get downloads for both Android and Ubuntu GNU/Linux at "www.element14.com/riotboard".  If you follow this link, you get here: http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/single-board_computers/riotboard

Aha!  You can now download "Linux OS Image".  I don't think it was there yesterday.  That's probably what Thomas needs -- It's 1.6GB.

That wasn`t there Yesterday :-)

John Beetem wrote:

 

From what I can tell, Section 5.1 only builds the software for Android, i.e., u-boot, Linux kernel image, and Android file system.  I don't see where it tells you how to build a Ubuntu file system.  Plus, a lot of us don't want to build GNU/Linux -- we'd rather download a pre-built u-boot + kernel + file system.

5.1 actually gets you a linux kernel and u-boot, not the android versions which are in 5.2.  Generally due to the i.MX6 being an armv7l architecture, that's all you really need. You can easily overlay one of Robert Nelsons Debian/Ubuntu root filesystems from Wandboard - Linux on ARM - eewiki or his BeagleBone Black versions.

Sadly, the kernel linked to in 5.1 is an ancient 3.0.35 bsp from Freescale. Freescale and most others have moved to 3.10.17 http://boundarydevices.com/mx6-linux-kernel-3-10-17-beta/ and it's actually possible to run the recently released 3.13 on most other boards.

Hi Thomas,

The "Linux" image that's available here:

http://downloads.element14.com/linux/Linux.zip?ICID=knode-riotboard-quick&COM=RIoTboard via RIoTboard

Is actually a fully built Ubuntu environment.

I flashed it to the RioTBoard last friday and it works. I question whether the User Manual is currently correct because it requires you to copy the files over those located in the MFGTool (Windows) but I was able to flash it without doing this. Whether or not this is optimal? I haven't looked into yet.

The User Manual covers how to flash your board. RIoTboard: User Manual for RIoTboard Platform

If you have any problems flashing the board please let me know the steps you're taking and post them here.

I'm advised that documentation will be updated by Monday the 17th of February.

The Ubuntu in that zip files is 11.10, so no longer supported by Canonical.

You *can* (OK, I did!), upgrade.  There's limited space on the flash memory, so I had to remove all of the GUI stuff ("apt-get purge" all packages with gnome, X11 and unity in the name, followed by "apt-get autoremove" - OK for me as I didn't want a desktop).  I had to add "auto eth0" and "iface eth0 inet dhcp" to /etc/network/interfaces (to get the LAN interface working again).  Then I ran "do-precision-upgrade" to upgrade to 12.04 (an LTS release).

The basic machine works (it boots into Linux, and the LAN and USB work), but I haven't yet checked any of the specialised parts (GPIO and so on).  I also found that the kernel doesn't support ntfs or xfs, so some of the partitions on the USB disks I connected weren't easily mountable (maybe fuse?).  It's also a bit odd about reboot (seems to hang as it comes down).  The kernel is 3.0.35-02871-ga35ffe3 - is that the same as originally delivered?

It now runs as a backuppc server quite happily, and much more quickly than the Raspberry Pi it replaced.  The Pi's Ethernet and USB share a bus, so network and disk access clash horribly - that was my initial impetus to get a RIoTBoard, but now that I've seen how good it is, I think I'll get another to develop apps on!

Simon,

I'd expect that's the original kernel and not part of ubuntu itself.  Mainstream distros are usually very good at including all the usual stuff like ntfs, xfs, and drivers for everything imaginable. They have to do that as they don't know exactly what hardware you'll end up runing it on.

It's good that you got the upgrade to work, but that 3.0.35 kernel will become a problem at some point in the future when something fundamental like glibc requires a newer version.  Unfortunately it's not easy to predict when that will happen, it could be next week or 2 years time.  You have to hope that e14 will have either upgraded by then, or will have pushed support for the board into mainstream kernel/u-boot.

As you're using it with disk storage, a suggestion would be to have a look at some of the other boards out there. An increasing number come with native SATA interfaces which make a lot more sense than USB and will give you more performance because of it.  The i.MX6 sata implementation seems to be reasonably good, but so far I've not seen it on anything other than the quad-core boards.

The other piece to take into account is that like the RPi the i.MX6 only has a single USB host controller, the additional physical ports are provided by an on-board hub. So if you plug another bandwidth heavy device into another usb port you'll have the same problem as you've described with the RPi to some degree.  The upside is that the i.MX6 has a much better USB implementation, so hopefully it's not so much of a problem.

I flashed it to the RioTBoard last friday and it works. I question whether the User Manual is currently correct because it requires you to copy the files over those located in the MFGTool (Windows) but I was able to flash it without doing this. Whether or not this is optimal? I haven't looked into yet.

What method did you use?  Can you step me through an easier route than the manual?

I went through this process yesterday, and it really is quite straight forward after you figure out what the directions are trying to tell you. Download the Linux image: http://downloads.element14.com/linux/Linux.zip?ICID=knode-riotboard-quick&COM=RIoTboard

After unzipping, copy the files in \Linux\image_SVN2487 to \Linux\tools\Mfgtools-Rel-4.1.0_130816_MX6DL_UPDATER\Profiles\MX6DL Linux Update\OS Firmware\files. This will over-write the files already there, but as Simon pointed out, they seem to already be the same files. But I copied them over anyways.

Then there's a bug in the files where you need to rename ucl2.txt to ucl2.xml in the directory \Linux\tools\Mfgtools-Rel-4.1.0_130816_MX6DL_UPDATER\Profiles\MX6DL Linux Update\OS Firmware

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Then change the switches as described in the User Guide to make the board enter serial bootloader mode. Next connect a mini-USB cable to the USB port located next to the Ethernet port (NOT the one next to the LVDS connector) and then plug-in power. It should enumerate as a HID device. Then start the manufacturing tool (MfgTool2.exe) in \Linux\tools\Mfgtools-Rel-4.1.0_130816_MX6DL_UPDATER, click on the "Start" button, and wait a while as it downloads to the board. This will take a while (>10 minutes) and you can look at the files it's copying by connecting a terminal to the UART header (see below). After it's done flashing, change the switches back to the original position, do a power cycle, and you should see Ubuntu come up shortly there after. And that's it.

You can connect to a terminal using the UART header on the board (I jury-rigged a setup, or you could use this cable: http://www.embest-tech.com/product/extension-module/uart8000-u.html (Green=pin 1, Red=pin 2, Black=pin3 on J18)) to check out the terminal messages while updating, and to update the U-boot commands if necessary. Though I found it was already correct, even after re-flashing the board.