kernel


One of the longterm goals for PiBox is to integrate it into the home.  I want to see the PiBox Server provide centralized communication for an array of IoT devices.  One way to do this is with Bluetooth Low-Energy, aka BLE, aka Bluetooth 4.0.  This specification allows very low power […]

PiBox: bluetooth for video means no omxplayer


When I was just getting started with embedded development I found many tutorials on how to perform cross compiles required setting up some shell functions and variables before working on builds.  This is a necessity for embedded work because the embedded build for the target platform won’t use the same […]

cdtools, because who has just one project?


I’ve been working on building custom Debian and Ubuntu distributions for use under VirtualBox.   One advantage that both have over Fedora is debootstrap.  This tool allows you to create a default rootfs from pre-compiled packages inside a directory.  You can then chroot into that directory to install the kernel image, […]

Debian/Ubuntu debootstrap images for VirtualBox



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The man page for timer_create() (used in applications, not in kernel code) gives a useful example of how to create and start high resolution timers.  However, it fails to mention that if you use multiple timers with a single signal then you need have a single signal handler that can […]

Working with timer_create() to use multiple timers using a single ...


Today I finally brought X up on the BeagleBoard!  The configuration is not ideal and there is much work to be done to stabilize and optimize it, but at least X is running.  Here is how I get it done with BeagleBox. What to build to get X running with […]

BeagleBox: X is working, stability and optimization still to ...




Over the holiday I managed to close out a few nagging issues in the builds.  First, logins stopped working until I realized that I’d turned off the getty’s on tty0 and tty02.  This wasn’t the complete fix, however, as Busybox was adding /etc/securetty to the rootfs and that file did […]

BeagleBox: working Xorg and eth support


Trying to come to grips with the myriad of source trees from which BeagleBoard related source can be pulled, I updated the BeagleBoard build system the other day to make it easier to pull from the various archives.  Technically there are four ways to get source related to BeagleBoard: A […]

BeagleBox: finding Mr. DSS2


I finally got a rootfs working with the kernel tonight.  It’s a minimal rootfs built with buildroot and busybox but it boots up to a shell prompt and does just enough work to make sure ps displays the process list.  Whoopeeeee!!! Now, don’t get crazy here.  This is just booting […]

BeagleBox Milestone: the board boots with BeagleBox software!



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I couldn’t figure out why my initrd or rootfs wouldn’t work and had exhausted all obvious solutions.  Jumping to Occam’s Razor, I decided the problem may be with the cross compiler toolchain.  So I grabbed Free Electron’s (FE) embedded Linux training lab (which focuses on the BeagleBoard) and decided to […]

BeagleBox: small steps – better xcc, u-boot/kernel boot but ...


I’m working two main issues at the moment:  stripping Matchbox to get a new BUI core and working on building and packaging the SGX SDK drivers.  The former is going well.  I’ve stripped session management and gconf already and checked those in.  I’ve got themes stripped down so that the […]

BeagleBox: Adjusting the design, learning about SGX and DSP


I spent the weekend trying to figure out why I couldn’t get the XComposite extension to show up under the fbdev X driver under QEMU.  It took until Sunday night to figure out that I need the cirrus fbdev kernel driver along with turning on xdpyinfo, libXcomposite, and the Cirrus […]

BeagleBox: XComposite enabled under QEMU