Booting Linux

Booting Linux on Atlas SoC Development Platform

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Attention: work in progress!

Prerequisites

The following are required:

• Atlas SoC Development Platform
• Host PC running Linux or Windows
• Micro SD Card with latest Atlas SoC image (see Getting Latest SD Card Image for details)

Configuring the Board

Configure the board as follows:

• SW10: 1:ON, 2:OFF, 3:ON, 4:OFF, 5:ON, 6:ON

Connect mini USB cable from board connector J4 to host PC. This will be used for serial terminal.

Connect micro USB cable from board connector J2 to host PC. This will be used for the composite USB device providing:

• USB Mass Storage Device: containing the necessary host drivers
• Serial Connection: enabling an additional serial console.
• Network Card: enabling TCP/IP Communication to the board through USB

Configuring Serial Connection

Note: This step is required only for debugging purposes, to see the serial console while Linux is booting. After Linux has booted, an additional serial console is available through the USB composite device.

The board has a built-in FTDI USB to Serial converter chip that allows the host computer to see the board as a virtual serial port. Modern Linux distributions have built-in drivers for the FTDI USB to Serial converter chip, so no driver installation is necessary on those platforms. On Windows, the SoC EDS installer automatically installs the required drivers if necessary.

The serial communication parameters are:

• Baud-rate: 115,200
• Parity: none
• Flow control: none
• Stop bits: 1

On Windows, utilities such asTeraTerm andPuTTY can be used to connect to the board. They are easily configured from the tool menus.

On Linux, the minicom utility can be used. Here is how to configure it:

1. The virtual serial port is usually named /dev/ttyUSB0. In order to determine the device name associated with the virtual serial port on your host PC, please perform the following:

• Use the following command to determine which USB serial devices are already installed: ls /dev/ttyUSB*
• Connect mini USB cable from J10 to the PC. This will enable the PC to communicate with the board, even if the board is not powered yet.
• Use the ls /dev/ttyUSB* command command again to determine which new USB serial device appeared.

3. Install minicom application on host PC, if not already installed.

• On CentOS, use sudo yum install minicom
• On Ubuntu, use sudo apt-get install minicom

3. Configure minicom

$ sudo minicom -s

Under Serial Port Setup choose the following

• Serial Device: /dev/ttyUSB0 (edit to match the system as necessary)
• Bps/Par/Bits: 115200 8N1
• Hardware Flow Control: No
• Software Flow Control: No
• Hit [ESC] to return to the main configuration menu

Select Save Setup as dfl to save the default setupSelect Exit.

Booting Linux

This section presents how to boot Linux on the board. The required steps are:

1. Start serial terminal (when using minicom it will connect using the selected settings, for others connect manually)

2. Power up board

3. Linux boots

4. Login using ‘root’ as username and no password.

Readme HTML File

Once Linux boots up, it will show as a Mass Storage Device on your host PC. Double-click the file name start.htm from the root of that device to open the file in your browser. It will contain further instructions.

The following is just an example of the readme file, the contents may change on different releases: