Release Notes

This release of the Linux BSP for CycloneV SoC provides the following components:

• Linux kernel 3.6 with support for UART, SDRAM, HPS GPIO, and SD/MMC
• u-boot 2012.10
• Yocto version 'Danny'

Known issues

This release does not support VT. This release only enables the CycloneV SoC Development Kit.

FogBugz#	Headline
84038	Add IRQ support to the HPS GPIO driver
84047	gpio driver hangs when told to export twice or change direction twice - gpio-dw.c driver hangs if the same gpio line is exported a second time. It also hangs if the direction for a certain gpio is set to 'out'
91072	SMP is not working on the CycloneV SoC Development kit
91445	intermittent problem mounting filesystem on SD/MMC

Building the Linux BSP

Yocto is used to build the SoCFPGA Linux BSP. A Yocto User's Manual is here.

Board settings

Minimum Connections

• Power
• J7 = USB-to-serial adapter for u-boot/Linux serial console
• J37 = On-board USB Blaster II

Dip switch settings

• SW1 = all switches set toward the board edge.
• SW2 = all switches set away from the corner of the board.
• SW3 = all switches set toward the board edge.
• SW4 = JTAG ENABLE
  • Each switch enables a connection to the scan chain when its corresponding switch is set away from the board edge (off).
  • Set for programming the FPGA using the on-board USB Blaster II = ON/OFF/ON/OFF, leaving the FPGA and MAX connected to JTAG

Jumper settings

• Clock select and boot select
  • CLKSEL0, CLKSEL1, BOOTSEL0, BOOTSEL1 = all set toward the power switch
  • BOOTSEL2 = set away from the power switch

    number	name	setting
    J5	9V	open
    J6	JTAG_HPS_SEL	open
    J8	JTAG_SEL	shorted
    J13	OSC1_CLK_SEL	shorted
    J15	JTAG_MIC_SEL	open
    J31	SPI I2C	open

    Board reworks

    An official list of reworks has not been released at this time.

    Host dependencies/Requirements

    CentOS

    In order to run bitbake under CentOS 6.0, you will need several packages installed: "Development tools", C Compiler (gcc), C++ Compiler (g++), texi2html, makeinfo, svn, chrpath
    To install these from the CentOS command-line, type:

       $ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
       $ sudo yum install texi2html texinfo

    If you run a 64-bit OS, then the following command:

    $ sudo yum install glibc-devel

    Note that git is not required to build Yocto.
    Note: CentOS 5.x is not supported.

    Ubuntu

    These are the instructions to get the needed packages for a yocto Ubuntu install process.

          $ sudo apt-get update
          $ sudo apt-get install yum
          $ sudo apt-get install sed wget cvs subversion git-core coreutils unzip texi2html texinfo libsdl1.2-dev docbook-utils gawk python-pysqlite2 diffstat help2man make gcc build-essential g++ desktop-file-utils chrpath libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev mercurial autoconf automake groff libtool xterm
          /* Change from using dash as the default shell to bash */
          $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash
          $ mkdir altera-linux in the directory of hierarchy of choice.

    Other Distributions

    Other distributions may work, but we have not tested them.

    Preparing boot image for SD card

    For SDMMC boot, all boot images will be located inside SD/MMC card where the default layout as below.
    
    1. At Linux machine (with root access), invoke fdisk command.
    % fdisk /dev/sdx
    2. Create 3 partition as shown
    Partition 1 → FAT32
    Partition 2 → Linux (ID 0x83)
    Partition 3 → Custom 0xA2
    3. Format and mount the FAT32 partition
    % mkdosfs /dev/sdx1
    % mount /dev/sdx1
    4. Copy the DTB file (Linux) and OS image into partition. Then “umount” it.
    Currently, U-Boot will search the OS image with file name "uImage" while DTB is "socfpga.dtb".
    These name can be changed as they are saved under U-Boot environment
    5. Copy Linux file system to Linux partition (Linux)
    % dd if=rootfs.ext3 of=/dev/sdx2
    
    6. Copying Preloader and Bootloader (U-Boot) images to custom A2 partition.
    % dd if=u-boot-spl-header.bin of=/dev/sdx3 bs=64k seek=0
    % dd if=u-boot.img of=/dev/sdx3 bs=64k seek=4
    FYI, please refer to tools section on how to generate the "u-boot-spl-header.bin" file.
    It is Preloader file with BootROM's required header.
    7. Done and slot the card into target board.
    Ensure you configure correct BSEL settings.
    
    .

    Running Linux in SMP or Uni-processor mode

    The Linux kernel supports Symmetric MultiProcessing (SMP), each CPU of the SoCFPGA CPU complex sees the system the same way. The resources of the system are equally accessible by each core. This is the default for the SoCFPGA Linux kernel.
    Sometimes, it is useful to run Linux on only one core:
    • debugging the functions of a driver without re-entrancy issues
    • debugging an application affected by race conditions
    This section describes how to run Linux in Uni-Processor mode by changing either the kernel command line or the kernel configuration.

    Changing the kernel command line

    The kernel reads a command line at boot time, the command line is a list of arguments that define the behavior of the kernel.
    This includes:
    • the speed of the UART console,
    • the NFS settings (when the root file system is mounted over the network)
    • the number of CPU's the kernel can use
    The number of CPU's the kernel can use at run time is defined by the command line argument 'maxcpus'.
    So, to run the SoCFPGA Linux kernel in Uni-Processor mode, change the kernel command line as follows:

    bootargs = "console=ttyS0,57600 maxcpus=1"

    The command line can be found in the device tree file, located in the kernel tree, arch/arm/boot/dts/socfpga_cyclone5.dts
    Once the device tree has been changed, just run the following command to rebuilt it into a device tree blob:

    bitbake virtual/kernel

    Changing the kernel configuration

    The default SoCFPGA kernel configuration enables SMP. This can be turned off by editing the configuration (see instructions below).
    To modify the kernel configuration, following this procedure:

    bitbake -c menuconfig -f virtual/kernel

    This will open the configuration menu of the kernel. Turn off the option 'Symmetric Multiprocessing' (under 'Kernel Features'), save the configuration and rebuild the kernel

    bitbake -f -c compile virtual/kernel && bitbake -f -c deploy virtual/kernel