Installing a cross-compiled system to the phone

This article is about installing your cross-compiled system on the SD-Card of your phone with NFS.

See also an alternative stage4 setup page.

Preparing a stage3 tarball

The first thing is to prepare a cross-compiled base system. To do so, you have to:

• setup your cross-compile environment (see Cross-compiling)
• cross-compile a base system and nfs-utils (make sure you create binpkgs) by typing

  emerge-armv4tl-softfloat-linux-gnueabi system
  emerge-armv4tl-softfloat-linux-gnueabi nfs-utils
  

• setup a binary package host
• install the packages (optional: set an INSTALL_MASK) from your binhost to a stage3 directory typing

  emerge-armv4tl-softfloat-linux-gnueabi --root=<path to stage3 dir> -g system
  emerge-armv4tl-softfloat-linux-gnueabi --root=<path to stage3 dir> -g nfs-utils
  

• add missing stuff to the stage directory

  cd <path to stage3 dir>
  mkdir boot dev proc root sys
  mknod dev/null c 1 3
  mknod dev/console c 5 1
  

• check if the stage3 tarball has a valid gcc set and set one if not

  ROOT=<path to stage3 dir> gcc-config -l
  ROOT=<path to stage3 dir> gcc-config 1
  

• create a tarball of the stage3 directory

  cd <path to stage3 dir>
  tar cvjf ../gentoo-freerunner-stage3.tar.bz2 .
  

• make sure you can access the tarball from the phone.

Preparing the host and the phone

You now have a nice starting point for your base system. The next step is to prepare the phone. Before booting the phone, make sure you have:

• installed a SD-Card that is large enough in the Freerunner (2GB should do it)
• a rootfs that you can boot from NAND or over the network (see NFS-Boot) containing the following tools:
  • tar
  • chroot
  • mount
  • fdisk
  • wget # for downloading the stage3 tarball
  • nfs-utils # for accessing NFS
  • mkfs # for the filesystem you want to put on the SD-Card
• access to the host (via http or ftp) providing the stage3 tarball we created above
• access to the host (via http or ftp) providing the cross-compiled binpkgs
• recommended: access to the host (via nfs) providing the portage tree
• recommended: access to the host (via nfs) providing the openmoko overlay

Preparing the SD-Card in the phone

Now boot the phone into the (NAND or NFS) rootfs mentioned above! The next step is to prepare the SD-Card:

• check your date setting and correct it if necessary

  date
  date <MMDDhhmmYYYY>
  

• create the partitions you want (in the following we will only use one partition):

  fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
  

• create the filesystem (in this case ext2):

  mke2fs /dev/mmcblk0p1
  

Install the base system

To install the cross-compiled base system on your phone do the following:

• create the mount point for the sdcard and mount it

  mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo
  mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/gentoo
  

• get the stage3 tarball by e.g. wget

  wget ftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/gentoo-freerunner-stage3.tar.bz2
  

• untar the stage3 tarball

  tar xvjpf gentoo-freerunner-stage3.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo
  sync
  

• get the portage tree and overlay e.g. via NFS:

  mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage
  mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/usr/local/portage/openmoko-overlay
  mount -t nfs 192.168.0.200:<path to portage> /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage -o nolock,nfsvers=2
  mount -t nfs 192.168.0.200:<path to overlay> /mnt/gentoo/usr/local/portage/openmoko-overlay -o nolock,nfsvers=2
  

• now we can continue in the Handbook style
• edit the /etc/make.conf file and make sure you have
  • set the USE flags to those you use on the buildhost
  • set the VIDEO_CARDS to those you use on the buildhost
  • set the INPUT_DEVICES to those you use on the buildhost
  • set CHOST="armv4tl-softfloat-linux-gnueabi"
  • set CFLAGS to those you use on the buildhost
  • add the overlay PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/openmoko-overlay/openmoko-target $PORTDIR_OVERLAY"
  • set the binhost PORTAGE_BINHOST="ftp://<user>:<passwd>@192.168.119.20"
  • set your portage working dir to a tmpfs to preserve your SDCard PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/tmp
• prepare the chrooting

  cp /mnt/gentoo/usr/share/zoneinfo/<your timezone> /mnt/gentoo/etc/localtime
  cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
  mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
  mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
  mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/gentoo/dev/pts
  

• chroot to the brand new base system

  chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
  env-update
  source /etc/profile
  

• setup the keywording based on the overlay

  cd /etc/portage
  for c in keywords mask unmask use; do mkdir /etc/portage/package.$c; done
  for c in keywords mask unmask use; do cd package.$c; ln -s /usr/local/portage/openmoko-overlay/portage-flags-target/$c openmoko; cd -; done
  

• choose the openmoko profile

  cd /etc
  ln -snf /usr/local/portage/openmoko-overlay/openmoko-target/profiles/openmoko /etc/make.profile
  

• check if portage itself is setup correctly and let it rebuild its database

  emerge --info
  

• rerun all important pkg_postinst for adding users etc.

  find /var/db/pkg -name '*.ebuild' -exec grep -qF 'pkg_postinst()' {} \; -exec ebuild {} postinst \;
  

• install a (binary kernel) and its modules
• Optinal: Reemerge the system and nfs-utils to get all postinstall procs. Get yourself a cup of coffee! This may take a while...

  emerge -geq world
  emerge -geq nfs-utils
  

Setting up the system

• set a root password

  passwd
  

• edit /etc/fstab and add all required filesystems

  nano /etc/fstab
  

• configure usb0 network starting

  nano /etc/conf.d/net
  ---
  config_usb0=("192.168.0.202 netmask 255.255.255.0" )
  ---
  cd /etc/init.d/
  ln -s net.lo net.usb0
  

• add all important services to the runlevels

  rc-update add udev sysinit
  rc-update add sshd default
  rc-update add net.usb0 default
  rc-update add <service> <runlevel>
  

• Reboot and have fun!

Few words about modules and configuring modprobe.conf and modules.d

TODO