uClinux without Flash (again)

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originally posted by jdhar@Nov 30 2005, 03:32 AM

ok, so here's some other news... i got buildroot to build with the flags you told me to set. let me see if i understand this much:

- buildroot generates a toolchain which is basically similar to the toolchain i was using off the nios ii linux cd, however, this is nios2-linux-uclibc... and the other was nios2-elf-gcc...??

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Yes, they are the same compiler. Only the default link library differ.

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- I can use either to build the kernel the same way I have been doing, it&#39;s just I guess the buildroot toolchain requires an extra step to convert the vmlinux file to a .bin file that can be downloaded???[/b]

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Yes, you can use either. You can convert a vmlinux, which is an ELF format , to binary for programming the flash with the objcopy command.

nios2-linux-uclibc-objcopy -O binary vmlinux vmlinux.bin

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- /buildroot/build_nios2/root <-- this is the root filesystem that I will want initramfs to use??[/b]

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Yes, you should copy them to another place to be used as your root fs.

Remove usr/include usr/lib to save space.

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- I should use busybox and set the target to /buildroot/build_nios2/root so it can populate it with applications??[/b]

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Yes, "make install" will populate it.

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- Now busybox requires uclibc... is that something I have to download again, because buildroot already used it, didn&#39;t it? Do I have to setup the environment somehow to know where uclibc is??[/b]

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The buildroot builds the uclibc already. So you don&#39;t have to download again.

If you use marc&#39;s patch, update Makefile,Rules.mak, seach barco and change to your staging_dir.

If you use examples///busybox, and the following three line to the beginning of Rules.mak .

STAGING_DIR = /usr/local/src/buildroot/build_nios2/staging_dir
UCLIBC_PLUGIN = $(STAGING_DIR)
APP_PLUGIN = $(STAGING_DIR)

And in staging_dir , add symlink scripts --> lib,

in staging_dir/bin, add symlink elf2flt --> nios2-linux-uclibc-elf2flt .

Note, you must prepare a initial .config for busybox before menuconfig.

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One thing I don&#39;t understand is how the nodes in /dev are created since it doesn&#39;t seem that busybox does that, or buildroot...[/b]

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Either use "mknod" to create them, or copy them from your Linux host.

 cp -a /dev/zero /dev/null /dev/console  rootfs/dev