How to make a custom Linux image for Toradex Apalis iMX6Q

I’m going to show you how to make a system image for Toradex iMX6Q with the following libraries:

• OpenGL
• Qt with EGLFS plugin

First of all we need to know about the YOCTO project and install the required packages.

What is Yocto?

The Yocto project (http://www.yoctoproject.org/) is an embedded Linux distribution builder that makes use of several other open source projects.

The Yocto project provides a reference build sytem for embedded Linux, called Poky, which has the BitBake and OpenEmbedded-Core (OE-Core) projects at its base. The purpose of Poky is to build the components needed for an embedded Linux product, namely:

1. A boot loader Image
2. A linux kernel image
3. A root filesystem
4. Toolchain and SDK for aplication development

Then we need to clone the Yocto-OpenEmbedded project from Toradex. So we need to install git and git-repo programs, after that we need to configure the build process.

Toradex

• Name: Apalis iMX6 Quad 2GB IT
• Carrier: Ixora v1.1
• GPU: Vivante GC2000
• CPU: Cortex-A9

Hardware Requirements

My machine is running Ubuntu 18.04 and has the following hardware:

• CPU i3–8100 CPU @ 3.60GHz
• RAM 16G
• Storage 2T HDD

Install

I’m going to use Ubuntu 18.04 on a machine with 16 GiB of RAM to compile a Linux for iMX6Q.

Package Requirement

These packages are needed by Yocto:

$ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib build-essential chrpath socat libsdl1.2-dev xterm make xsltproc docbook-utils fop dblatex xmlto autoconf automake libtool libglib2.0-dev python-gtk2 bsdmainutils screen

And these packages:

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install g++-5-multilib
$ sudo apt-get install curl dosfstools gawk g++-multilib gcc-multilib lib32z1-dev libcrypto++6:i386 libcrypto++-dev:i386 liblzo2-dev:i386 lzop libsdl1.2-dev libstdc++-5-dev:i386 libusb-1.0-0:i386 libusb-1.0-0-dev:i386 uuid-dev:i386 texinfo chrpath

Install Git

$ sudo apt install git
$ git config --global user.name "Name"
$ git config --global user.email Name@example.com

Install git-repo

$ mkdir ~/bin
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
$ curl http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
$ chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Install Yocto-OpenEmbedded

$ mkdir oe-core
$ cd oe-core
$ repo init -u http://git.toradex.com/toradex-bsp-platform.git -b LinuxImageV2.8
$ repo sync

In the oe-core directory we need to setup environment variable so we use the following command

. export or source export

All config files will be stored at build/config.

The build directory contains a conf directory with some files.

There are bblayers.conf and local.conf in the conf directory.

• bblayers.conf: contains metadata layers.
• local.conf: contains configuration variable.

Insert following configuration into local.conf file.

MACHINE ?= "apalis-imx6”
#INHERIT += "rm_work”
ACCEPT_FSL_EULA = "1”
DISTRO_FEATURES_remove = "x11 wayland”
IMAGE_INSTALL_remove = "eglinfo-x11”
IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " qtbase qtbase-plugins cinematicexperience liberation-fonts"
PACKAGECONFIG_FONTS_append_pn-qtbase = " fontconfig”
IMAGE_INSTALL_remove = "backports"
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL += "openssh \
vim \
qtbase-plugins \
qtbase-tools \
qtdeclarative \
qtdeclarative-tools \
qtdeclarative-qmlplugins \
qtmultimedia \
qtmultimedia-plugins \
qtmultimedia-qmlplugins \
qtsvg \
qtsvg-plugins \
qtsensors \
qtimageformats-plugins \
qtsystems \
qtsystems-tools \
qtsystems-qmlplugins \
qtscript \
qt3d \
qt3d-qmlplugins \
qt3d \
qt3d-qmlplugins \
qt3d-tools \
qtgraphicaleffects-qmlplugins \
qtconnectivity-qmlplugins \
qtlocation-plugins \
qtlocation-qmlplugins \
cinematicexperience \
fb-test fbgrab fbida fbset-modes \
es2gears \
qt4-examples \
"
PACKAGECONFIG_append_pn-qtbase = " gles2 eglfs "
DISTRO_FEATURES_append = " opengles2 egl opengl gles gbm dri eglfs gles2 "
MACHINEOVERRIDES .= ":use-mainline-bsp"
PACKAGECONFIG_append = " linuxfb eglfs gbm gles2 kms”
PACKAGECONFIG_remove = "gl xcb xcb-xinput"

Start compiling with the following command:

bitbake console-tdx-image

After compile successfully finished we are going to setup network and U-BOOT configuration.

Then I can boot my custom Linux from network for development.

Reference

• Embedded Linux Projects Using Yocto Project Cookbook
• https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/embedded-linux.html
• https://developer.toradex.com/knowledge-base/board-support-package/openembedded-(core)