How do I creat a jffs2 image?

> Does anyone know how to create a jffs2 image from within the Windows

> NIOS II IDE?

You'll need to port mkfs.jffs2 to cygwin -- I have a version laying around

somewhere ... if I can find it, I'll post it somewhere appropriate for download.

> If I was on a Linux box, I would download the latest mtd snapshot, build the

> tools, install them, then use the appropriate utilities to create the image based

> on a target directory. I'm not sure how to accomplish all of this under the NIOS II IDE.

I didn't build the jffs2 filesystem via the IDE -- I just used the shell and mkfs.jffs2.

It should be relatively straight forward to setup a simple make file that invokes

mkfs.jffs2 via the IDE though.

A few things to keep in mind: the IDE linux filesystem utilities do some handy

conversions for you ... like removing .exe extensions, and setting up device

inode [major,minor] numbers (based on the device filename -- you can

look at your target /dev to see what I mean). When using mkfs.jffs2, I just used

the -D, --devtable option.

> Also, can all of this be performed on the host system, or should some or all of it be

> performed on the target system?

Yes, all can be performed on the host under cygwin -- once you have mkfs.jffs2.

But you'll need the native gcc -- which isn't (wasn't) part of the Nios-II tools. When

I installed the Microtronix linux, native gcc was included (presumably to support

menu config, etc.) -- which BTW is really great to have :-) -- kudos to Microtronix!

A final note: if you're using the "standard" AMD AM29LV065D flash, you may experience

some problems with the cfi chip driver -- I'm not sure if this has been resolved in the

2.6 kernel sources yet.

Regards,

--Scott

Thank you for your help. As far as the IDE goes, I'm perfectly happy to use the command line environment. Its just that I'm not familiar with cygwin, nios2 ide, or the nios2 command line tools.

If you can find your port, that would be great. It would at least provide me with validation for my own effort. In the meantime, I've copied the mtd code over to my cygwin environment and am trying to port it over also.

Does the porting mostly involve redirecting library and include directories, or is there custom coding involved?

> Does the porting mostly involve redirecting library and include directories,

> or is there custom coding involved?

It's mostly getting the proper include files setup and defining a few macros

that are not normally present in the cygwin headers.

--Scott

Source code is available at:

http://www.psyent.com/download (http://www.psyent.com/download)

The file you want is flashfs.tar.gz.

To build, open Nios-II shell, then:

1. Un-tar

2. In both subdirectories: just 'make'

3. Copy the .exe to your /usr/local/bin

Enjoy,

--Scott

PS - if you find any bugs/problems, please feel free to send me

a patch -- I'll update so everyone can get the fixes.