Linux Category - Page 555 of 574 - CNX Software

October 6, 2011October 6, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Dropbear: Lightweight SSH Server / Client

You may need to remotely access your embedded device, or your embedded systems is simply headless. You could use telnet, but this is insecure. A secure way to access a device remotly is to use SSH protocol. OpenSSH is one implementation but this is relatively too large and may use uncesary space on a device with limited storage. That’s where Dropbear comes into play. Dropbear is a lightweight implementation of an SSH client and server and is ideal for embedded systems. Dropbear ARM executable is only 200 KB. Here’s how it’s described on its website: Dropbear is a relatively small SSH 2 server and client. It runs on a variety of POSIX-based platforms. Dropbear is open source software, distributed under a MIT-style license. Dropbear is particularly useful for “embedded”-type Linux (or other Unix) systems, such as wireless routers. The main features of dropbear: A small memory footprint suitable for memory-constrained […]

October 6, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Cross-comping zlib for ARM target

Zlib is defind as “A Massively Spiffy Yet Delicately Unobtrusive Compression Library” and used in many projects requiring compression. Here are the instructions cross-compile zlib for ARM: Download zlib1.25 wget http://cdnetworks-kr-2.dl.sourceforge.net/project/libpng/zlib/1.2.5/zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz Extract it tar xzvf zlib-1.2.5.tar.gz cd zlib-1.2.5 Configure, build and install zlib. CC=armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi-gcc ./configure –prefix=/home/jaufranc/edev/rootfs make make install This will install libz.a (static library) and libz.so (dynamic library) in /home/jaufranc/edev/rootfs/lib and copy the header files to /home/jaufranc/edev/rootfs/include. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

October 6, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Installing an ARM Toolchain in Fedora

You can easily install an arm cross-compiler on Fedora as follows: cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ sudo wget http://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/arm/fedora/cross/cross.repo sudo yum install armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi-gcc You can check the installation worked by checking the cross-compiler version [jaufranc@localhost ~]$ armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi-gcc -v Using built-in specs. Target: armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi Configured with: ../configure –prefix=/usr –mandir=/usr/share/man –infodir=/usr/share/info –enable-shared –enable-threads=posix –enable-checking=release –with-system-zlib –enable-__cxa_atexit –disable-libunwind-exceptions –enable-languages=c,c++ –disable-libgcj –with-sysroot=yes –enable-version-specific-runtime-libs –target=armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi Thread model: posix gcc version 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33.fa1) This will only install the C compiler (gcc), to install the C++ compiler, run the following command: sudo yum install armv5tel-redhat-linux-gnueabi-gcc-c++ Tested in Fedora 12. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

October 6, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

AMD G-Series QSeven Module Conga-QAF by Congatec

Congatec announced the Conga-QAF, a Qseven module powered by AMD G-Series embedded processors. The module will come with either the AMD G-T40R single core or the AMD G-T40E dual core processor, with 2 GB DRAM by default (expandable to 4GB), numerous I/O interfaces and an optional on-board SSD with a capacity of up to 32 GB. If you are not familiar with the QSeven Form Factor and why it is used, please read the beginning of the blog post entitled “QSeven Form Factor Embedded Boards by Seco“. To summarize, this is a standard to allow developers to use modules (based on QSeven specs) to test their software on several processors by inserting those modules in a common main board. Here are the specification of the Conga-QAF Qseven module: CPU AMD G-T40E 1.0 GHz Dual Core (L1 cache 64KB, L2 cache 512kB x2, 6.4 W) AMD G-T40R 1.0 GHz Single Core […]

October 4, 2011January 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

Xibo Digital Signage on ARM (Beagleboard / Overo)

Xibo (pronounced eX-E-bO) is an open source, multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage solution written in Python (there is also a dotnet version). This is a client /server solution that can run on Windows or Linux. If you are not familiar with Xibo you can visit http://xibo.org.uk/ or/and read my introduction XIBO: An Open Source Digital Signage Server/Client. Since I had not seen digital signage solution running on low cost ARM development platform such as Beagleboard, Pandaboard or Origen, I decided to give the Xibo python client a try using qemu to emulate Gumstix Overo COM (OMAP 3530). Porting Xibo to ARM could provide several benefits compared to x86 platform: Lower hardware cost Lower power consumption (and electricity bill) Smaller form factor allowing easier integration in displays and in transportation (e.g. buses, subway trains). Easier to implement new digital signage features such as touch screen support, 3G connectivity, location based […]

October 4, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 11.09 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.4

Linaro has just released version 11.09 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.4. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Ethernet Configuration Manager from the x86 Android project is now available in all builds. Ethernet now works on Panda, Staging Panda, Beagle, Beagle xM, Staging Snowball. QA on all boards for the 11.09 Linaro Android Builds. Daily builds of Android toolchain against gcc-linaro bzr repository is provided. Android is now compiled with GCC4.6 with -O3. Busybox is built from source in all Android builds. glmark2 added to all the official builds for Android. Powertop is now available on Android. Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked. All Android builds are running with the 11.09 toolchain. The MLO that Panda and Staging Panda uses for Android uses gets built from source from the upstream git. An OMAP4460 Android build is available from android-build. Panda supports Bluetooth. Panda supports Wi-Fi. Snowball Android A-release from […]

October 3, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Cross Compiling libavg for ARM

libavg is a high-level development platform for media-centric applications using Python as scripting language and written in C++. Bear in mind that are many dependencies with libavg 1.6. I have not built all the libraries required, but instead simply taken the pre-built binaries and header files in the qemu overo image and copied the files as follows: mkdir mnt sudo mount -o loop,offset=$[106496*512] overo_sd_alip.img mnt mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib -p mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include cp mnt/usr/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d cp mnt/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d cp /mnt/usr/include/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -rf -d sudo umount mnt The -d flag skips the symlink, so we need to recreate then for all library so that the compiler can find libname.so instead of libname.so.12. Save the following scripts to symlinks.sh:

#!/bin/sh
liblist=`ls *.so.??`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done
liblist=`ls *.so.?`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done

#!/bin/sh

liblist=`ls *.so.??`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

liblist=`ls *.so.?`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

and run it where the arm libraries are located (in my case in /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib, /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi and /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/mesa). This will create symlinks for most libraries, but not all. Some will still […]

October 3, 2011October 20, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Cross-Compiling Mesa 3D Graphics Library for ARM

Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification that can be used for software emulation or complete hardware acceleration for modern GPUs.The Mesa library is used by a variety of games (e.g. Quake 2.3), libraries (e.g PyOpenGL), science and technical applications and utilities (e.g. xscreensaver). MesaLib requires X11 libraries. I’ll assume those are already cross-compiled here. For this build, I used pre-built X11 libraries found in ALIP (ARM Internet Platform) binaries. I used the method described here and copied the libs in /lib and /usr/lib and header files in /lib/include found in the qemu overo image respectively to /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/lib and /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/include. make sure you use the “-d” with cp to avoid copying the symlinks or some symbolic links would point to x86 binaries or files that do not exist. Here are the instructions to cross-compile MesaLib 7.11 for ARM using arm-linux-guneabi-gcc: Download the latest version of Mesa source code: […]