Zynq design from scratch. Part 21.
Installing and running Linux
History
The History of Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, to create a new free operating system kernel. Since then, the resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 3.10 version in 2013 with more than 16 million lines of source code under the GNU General Public License.Linux was originally developed as a free operating system for Intel x86-based personal computers. It has since been ported to more computer hardware platforms than any other operating system. It is a leading operating system on servers and other big iron systems such as mainframe computers and supercomputers. Linux also runs on embedded systems (devices where the operating system is typically built into the firmware and highly tailored to the system) such as mobile phones, network routers, building automation controls, televisions and video game consoles. The Android system in wide use on mobile devices is built on the Linux kernel.Linux on ARMARM processors and Linux have been married for years. You name an ARM-based device, smartphones, Raspberry Pi, tablets and you’ll find Linux running inside it. It’s not been a happy marriage though. For every ARM system on a chip (SoC) there had to be a different Linux spin. Find out more.
Xilinx Zynq-7000 Linux solution
The Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoC Linux solution combines the benefits of the Linux operating system together with PetaLinux Tools and Xilinx SDK geared towards designing software applications on this platform. This solution provides:
- Fully tested and user ready, out-of-the-box solution targeting Zynq-7000 AP SoC boards
- Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) and Asymmetric Multi-Processing (AMP) mode support of ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ processing system
- Board support package and drivers that closely follow the mainline kernel.org tree, providing the benefits of latest kernel features
- Linux kernel that use device tree for run-time configuration which allows the same kernel image to run on different hardware configurations
- PetaLinux Tools to customize, build and deploy Linux systems
- Xilinx SDK to develop, debug and profile Linux software applications
- QEMU system model of the Zynq-7000 SoC processing system to run and debug software applications
- Access to a growing community of software developers interested in the Zynq-7000 platform
- Access to world-class commercial solutions from Linux partners
Xilinx Zynq Linux Wiki
Many pieces come together to boot Linux successfully on Zynq. Information about the Zynq Processing System (PS), the design and layout of our board and the function of our custom hardware must be combined in order for our product to function properly. This section will help us understand the pieces and how they fit together.
Our Linux solutions
I plan to look at the following Linux implementations:
- Booting Linux from a SD card
- Installing and running PetaLinux
- Installing and running Ubuntu Linaro Linux
Boot pre-built image from SD card
In the ZedBoard box there is a 4GB SD card already loaded with a pre-built Linux image. Let's use it to boot Linux on our ZedBoard. The SD card contains the following files:
BOOT.BIN
devicetree_ramdisk.dtb
ramdisk8M.image.gz
README
zimage
Here is the README file:
------------------------------------------------
*** ZED DEMONSTRATION IMAGE ***
------------------------------------------------
*this document is meant to be viewed as a monospaced font
The files on this SD card may be used to boot a simple Linux image with
functionality that demonstrates the basic capabilities of the ZED board.
To boot this image, first insert the SD card into the ZED board, and
ensure that the jumpers are set as follows:
MIO 6: set to GND
MIO 5: set to 3V3
MIO 4: set to 3V3
MIO 3: set to GND
MIO 2: set to GND
VADJ Select: Set to 1V8
JP6: shorted
JP2: shorted
All other jumpers should be left unshorted.
Attach a computer running a terminal emulator to the UART port with a
USB micro cable. Configure the terminal emulator as follows:
Baud : 115200
8 data bits
1 stop bit
no parity
Attach a 12 V power supply to the ZED board and power it on. Connect to
the appropriate COM port in the terminal emulator. The boot process
should finish in about a minute. You will know boot-up has completed
when pressing return at the terminal presents you with a red "zynq>"
prompt.
When you are done using Linux, you should run the command:
poweroff
and then switch off the ZED board.
Connecting the SD card
1. Insert the SD card in the right-side connector.
2. Set jumpers for boot from SD card.
3. Power on the ZedBoard. The blue LED will turn on when booting has finished.
4. Start GTKterm and setup the configuration.
5. Look for the zynq> prompt
6. Execute the command: cat /proc/cpuinfo
7. If we get the zed-boot prompt we are stuck in U-boot. Type boot to continue the booting.
8. Here are some other commands to try out.
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