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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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20 years ago

Building and running Linux on Cyclone-II

Hello Folks,

I am interested in building (and running) a linux kernel for the Cyclone-II board from Altera, but apparently this board is not supported by 1.4 at this time. Has anybody successfully gotten this working and, if so, may I ask how one would do this?

I have seen the thread "How to build u-boot for cycloneII board?" but perhaps I am too inexperienced to interpret the advice given. I have quoted the cryptic bits below:

"You will need to add support for these boards. Please read the top-level README -- especially the section "Building the Software." For the Altera Cyclone II board, you can use any of the existing Altera boards as a starting point (e.g.: board/altera/ep1c20)."

I am not sure what is meant by the top-level readme. Perhaps with that I could unravel the rest.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

2 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    20 years ago

    Hey Andrew

    uClinux works like a charm on the CycloneII development board although there's no direct support for it.

    You should probably start with a simple uClinux project in the Nios2IDE and upload a kernel project and a filesystem project.

    When configuring your kernel you should (or at least can...) select the Stratix board as your platform.

    as for uboot... I'm running my board without and it works fine so I haven't researched that yet.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    20 years ago

    Hi Andrew,

    > I have quoted the cryptic bits below:

    I'll try to decrypt it for you:

    > > You will need to add support for these boards.

    When you build u-boot, you specify a specific board. The board(s) in question were

    not supported by u-boot. So someone (the 'You') needs to add the support in the

    source tree before u-boot will work on those board(s).

    > > Please read the top-level README -- especially the section "Building the Software."

    Virtually all GNU projects (and most open-source projects) contain a file named

    README. It's actually part of the GNU coding standards:

    gnu coding standards:<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

    --- Quote Start ---

    The distribution should contain a file named ‘README’ which gives the name of the

    package, and a general description of what it does.[/b]

    --- Quote End ---

    You should read the README file. In this case, it contains a section relevant to the discussion (how to

    add support for a board).

    > > For the Altera Cyclone II board, you can use any of the existing Altera boards as

    > > a starting point (e.g.: board/altera/ep1c20).

    In many cases, boards based on the same CPU architecture (e.g. Nios-II) can use

    the same or similar code. The common way to add support for a board is to just

    copy the code for an existing board and then make the necessary changes.

    In this particular case, the code in the board/altera/ep1c20 tree (or "directory

    hierarchy") is a good choice as the source of the copy.

    Hope this helps.

    Best Regards,

    --Scott