Linaro Engineering: ARMv8 activity

Downloading assets

Prepare a working directory:

mkdir ~/linaro-armv8
cd ~/linaro-armv8

Download boot image:

wget http://releases.linaro.org/13.05/openembedded/aarch64/img-foundation.axf

Download and extract disk image:

wget http://releases.linaro.org/13.05/openembedded/aarch64/vexpress64-openembedded_lamp-armv8_20130526-344.img.gz
gunzip vexpress64-openembedded_lamp-armv8_20130526-344.img.gz

Fast Models are ARM’s software to provide a full virtual ARMv8 system on an x86-64 machine (there is no 32-bit x86 version).  Linaro images will work with both the free to download ARMv8 Foundation model and with commercial Versatile Express model (AEMv8 VE model).

The following instructions are for the ARMv8 Foundation model which you may obtain from ARM at:

http://www.arm.com/fvp

Unpack the model in a directory of your choice, for instance in your home directory:

cd ~/linaro-armv8
tar xvf ~/Downloads/FM000-KT-00035-r0p8-44rel23.tgz

Running the system

Run the model with:

~/linaro-armv8/Foundation_v8pkg/Foundation_v8 --image ~/linaro-armv8/img-foundation.axf --block-device ~/linaro-armv8/vexpress64-openembedded_lamp-armv8_20130526-344.img --network=nat

After a couple of minutes, you should get a xterm window displaying boot progress, and subsequently a login prompt should show up; login is “root”.

Congratulations, that’s it!  You should now have a virtual ARMv8 system running; try running:

uname -a

Going further

Next you could consider:

• rebuilding the kernel
• rebuilding the OpenEmbedded root filesystem
• compile or cross-compile a "Hello World!" program
• setting up NFS boot
• setting up bridged networking
• running with the Versatile Express model
• porting OpenEmbedded packages to AArch64
• try the minimal or LAMP images
• contact us!

Creating an image

Linaro offers various pre-built images (root filesystems and boot files for models) built with OpenEmbedded. Download one of the root filesystems, for instance the “lamp” one, and download the support files for the Foundation and Versatile Express 64-bit platforms (hardware pack):

mkdir ~/linaro-armv8
cd ~/linaro-armv8
wget http://releases.linaro.org/13.05/openembedded/aarch64/hwpack_linaro-vexpress64-rtsm_20130526-344_arm64_supported.tar.gz
wget http://releases.linaro.org/13.05/openembedded/aarch64/linaro-image-lamp-genericarmv8-20130520-309.rootfs.tar.gz

To combine boot support files (hardware packs contain kernels, device trees etc.) with a root filesystem, you’ll need to install a very recent version of Linaro Image Tools which adds support for these Fast Models platforms; you may get a pre-built package from the Linaro Tools PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~linaro-maintainers/+archive/tools

Add the PPA to your system and install the linaro-image-tools package with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linaro-maintainers/tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linaro-image-tools

Generate a 2 GiB SD card image (it should be enough for larger images):

cd ~/linaro-armv8
linaro-media-create --dev fastmodel --output-directory fastmodel --image_size 2000M --hwpack ~/linaro-armv8/hwpack_linaro-vexpress64-rtsm_20130526-344_arm64_supported.tar.gz --binary ~/linaro-armv8/linaro-image-lamp-genericarmv8-20130520-309.rootfs.tar.gz

Engineering Builds

	Name	Version	Release	Downloads
	OpenEmbedded (LAMP)	2013.05	13.05
	OpenEmbedded (Source)	2013.05	13.05
	Versatile Express 64-bit (Support files)	2013.05	13.05

Components

Toolchain

We provide pre-built versions of Linaro GCC and Linaro GDB that target either a Linaro Engineering Build or a bare-metal target.