Self-built kernels on Linaro

Tried compiling kernel with .config from (http://elinux.org/Panda_How_to_kernel_3_3_rcx).

 $ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- ARCH=arm uImage
 $ make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- ARCH=arm tarbz2-pkg

Copy arch/arm/boot/uImage to boot partition and unpack modules tarball in root partition. First boot doesn’t go so well,

 Texas Instruments OMAP4460 ES1.1
 OMAP SD/MMC: 0
 reading u-boot.img
 reading u-boot.img
 
 
 U-Boot 2011.12-rc1 (Dec 19 2011 - 11:02:24)
 
 CPU  : OMAP4460 ES1.1
 Board: OMAP4 Panda
 I2C:   ready
 DRAM:  1 GiB
 WARNING: Caches not enabled
 MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0
 Using default environment
 
 In:    serial
 Out:   serial
 Err:   serial
 Net:   No ethernet found.
 Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
 reading uEnv.txt
 
 ** Unable to read "uEnv.txt" from mmc 0:1 **
 reading boot.scr
 
 514 bytes read
 Loaded script from boot.scr
 Running bootscript from mmc0 ...
 ## Executing script at 82000000
 reading uImage
 
 3409656 bytes read
 reading uInitrd
 
 1878123 bytes read
 reading board.dtb
 
 340 bytes read
 ## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 80200000 ...
 Image Name:   Linux-3.3.0-rc5-00102-g6b3e075
 Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
 Data Size:    3409592 Bytes = 3.3 MiB
 Load Address: 80008000
 Entry Point:  80008000
 Verifying Checksum ... OK
 ## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 81600000 ...
 Image Name:   Ubuntu Initrd
 Image Type:   ARM Linux RAMDisk Image (uncompressed)
 Data Size:    1878059 Bytes = 1.8 MiB
 Load Address: 00000000
 Entry Point:  00000000
 Verifying Checksum ... OK
 ## Flattened Device Tree blob at 815f0000
 Booting using the fdt blob at 0x815f0000
 Loading Kernel Image ... OK
 OK
 reserving fdt memory region: addr=9d000000 size=3000000
 Using Device Tree in place at 815f0000, end 815f3153
 
 Starting kernel ...
 
 Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel.
 

Alright, well, let’s try enabling DEBUG_LL and earlyprintk.

At least now we have an error,

 Starting kernel ...
 
 Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel.
 
 Error: unrecognized/unsupported device tree compatible list:
 [ 'ti,omap4-panda' 'ti,omap4430' ]
 
 Available machine support:
 
 ID (hex)	NAME
 ffffffff	Generic OMAP4 (Flattened Device Tree)
 ffffffff	Generic OMAP3 (Flattened Device Tree)
 00000870	OMAP4430 4430SDP board
 00000ae7	OMAP4 Panda board
 00000bbc	ti8148evm
 00000af0	ti8168evm
 
 Please check your kernel config and/or bootloader.

Ahh, so the devicetree file Linaro installed must not be compatible with this kernel. It seems that the kernel comes with some devicetrees. Let’s use one.

 $ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- omap4-panda.dtb

After copying arch/arm/boot/omap4-panda.dtb to board.dtb, we get boot! Sort of… Kernel oops shortly after boot due to bug to be fixed before release of 3.3 (http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-omap/msg64921.html). After applying proposed patch we get a bit further.

 [    1.699340] twl_rtc twl_rtc: setting system clock to 2000-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (946684800)
 [    1.710784] Freeing init memory: 240K
 Loading, please wait...
 modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465/modules.dep: No such file or directory
 
 mount: mounting udev on /dev failed: No such device
 W: devtmpfs not available, falling back to tmpfs for /dev
 Begin: Loading essential drivers ... FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465/modules.dep: No such file or directory
 FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465/modules.dep: No such file or directory
 FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465/modules.dep: No such file or directory
 FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465/modules.dep: No such file or directory
 done.
 Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... done.
 Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ... done.
 Gave up waiting for root device.  Common problems:
  - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
    - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
    - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
  - Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
 ALERT!  /dev/disk/by-uuid/539e4d72-de69-44ee-9c81-a54cf27ec22d does not exist.  Dropping to a shell!

It seems there’s an impedance mismatch between Linaro’s handling of /dev and my kernel’s. Ahh, CONFIG_DEVTMPFS and CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT aren’t enabled.

While this gets rid of the /dev errors, the root device is still unavailable. Ahhh, after much puzzling, it seems that something still isn’t right in the devicetree. The hint is,

 Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel.
 [    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0
 [    0.000000] Linux version 3.3.0-rc5-00103-g613a465-dirty (bgamari@goldnerlab) (gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu3) ) #13 SMP Thu Mar 1 18:33:15 EST 2012
 [    0.000000] CPU: ARMv7 Processor [412fc09a] revision 10 (ARMv7), cr=10c5387d
 [    0.000000] CPU: PIPT / VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT aliasing instruction cache
 [    0.000000] Machine: Generic OMAP4 (Flattened Device Tree), model: TI OMAP4 PandaBoard

Generic OMAP4 is a machine type alongside in OMAP4 Panda board in Kconfig. It must be picking the generic board, which has no MMC device in its devicetree. Hmmm.

Disabling Generic OMAP4 in .config causes the kernel to complain that it doesn’t support the devicetree. Pulling board file changes from this patch also doesn’t help. Adding the remaining compatibility flags to the board’s compatbility list gets things booting again.

Still can’t mount root however. It seems some ext4 flags aren’t supported by this kernel. Enable Ext4 and extended attributes in Kconfig.

Finally, we have full boot.