OpenEmbedded Angstrom Installtion / Uboot

OpenEmbedded

The Angstrom OE distribution does not build the tools automatically. I'm a novice at OE and bitbake, so here are the instructions for building and installing the tools manually. Theses instructions assume that you have already built the angstrom distribution for the beagle board. Substitute directories and compiler locations to match your environment.

1. cd to the source for U-Boot in the OE tree. For me, it is at "../oe/tmp/work/beagleboard-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/u-boot-git-r18.1/git"
2. manually build fw_printenv with make: "make env ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE= /usr/local/angstrom/arm/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnuabi-"
3. if the compile succeeded, you should have fw_printenv in the U-Boot directory tools/env. Copy fw_printenv to /sbin on the root filesystem of your beagle board.
4. the fw_printenv binary also contains the code for fw_setenv. the functions of fw_setenv are run when the program is invoked with the name "fw_setenv". this is most easily accomplished by creating a symbolic link from fw_printenv to fw_setenv, as in "ln -sf /sbin/fw_printenv /sbin/fw_setenv"

Buildroot

Buildroot can automatically build these tools for you. You just have to:

make menuconfig

and then select the following option:

Target filesystem options  --->
    [*] Das U-Boot Boot Monitor  --->
        [*]   fw_printenv tool in target

Tools will be installed in /usr/sbin/ of your target's rootfs.

OpenWrt

Like Buildroot, OpenWrt can build these tools too but you will find them in a different location in the menu:

Utilities  --->
    [*] uboot-envtools

Tools will also be installed in /usr/sbin/.

All distribs

The last and most important step is creating the config file for the utilities. The file name is fw_env.config and it lives in /etc. To create this file, you need to know information about where U-Boot stores its env variables. Specifically, you need the mtd device name, the device offset, the env size and the flash sector size. I found most of what I needed by looking in the file /proc/mtd. Here is my fw_env.config file:

  # Configuration file for fw_(printenv/setenv) utility.
  # Up to two entries are valid, in this case the redundant
  # environment sector is assumed present.
  # MTD device name       Device offset   Env. size       Flash sector size
         /dev/mtd2               0x0000          0x20000         0x20000

Usage

Printing all the environment variables

 # fw_printenv
 bootdelay=1
 baudrate=115200
 ipaddr=192.168.0.2
 serverip=192.168.0.1
 netmask=255.255.255.0
 bootfile="uImage"
 filesize=B81A24
 bootcmd=nand read 80200000 280000 400000;bootm 80200000
 bootargs=console=ttyS2,115200n8 console=tty0 root=/dev/mtdblock4 rw rootfstyp=jffs2 nohz=off
 stdin=serial   
 stdout=serial
 stderr=serial

Printing a single environment variable

  # fw_printenv stdin
  stdin=serial

Setting and verifying an environment variable

WARNING! If the fw_env.config does not point to U-Boot's env section in Flash, running fw_setenv could corrupt your Flash. Make sure that fw_printenv works properly and does not return a message about "bad CRC" before running fw_setenv.

 # fw_setenv mytestvariable abcdefg
 # fw_printenv mytestvariable
 mytestenv=abcdefg