A broad range of ARMv7-A boards have been enabled in openSUSE already. I would like to complement my experiences by bringing up Linux on an ARMv7-M board, the STM32F429I discovery board, featuring a Cortex-M4 and 8 MB SDRAM.

As first step I would build and deploy an image based on instructions from the Internet, using downstream U-Boot and kernel and known-working binary arm-uclinuxeabi compiler toolchain. As preparation I have already packaged the genromfs tool.

The next step would then be investigating the upstream U-Boot and kernel no-mmu support. Forward-porting is likely beyond the scope of this project though.

This project was inspired by recently posted patches for the Cortex-M4 core on the Freescale Vybrid VF6xx SoC (Cortex-A5 + Cortex-M4). However, a prerequisite for testing those Vybrid patches would seem to be bringing up mainline Linux on my armStoneA5 board (256 MB shared RAM) - which is likely outside the scope of my Hackweek projects, given a previous failed attempt at booting an upstream kernel with a custom device tree on that board...

This project is also related to my curiosity about the Renesas RZ/A1H SoC with Cortex-A9 and 10 MB SRAM (e.g., Hachiko board): Techniques for minimizing the memory footprint, such as execution-in-place (XIP), might also be applicable to building smaller-than-JeOS openSUSE images as alternative to Yocto-built images.

Packaging a cross-compilation toolchain may be a follow-up step.

Looking for hackers with the skills:

arm

This project is part of:

Hack Week 11

Activity

  • about 10 years ago: a_faerber liked this project.
  • about 10 years ago: a_faerber added keyword "arm" to this project.
  • about 10 years ago: a_faerber started this project.
  • about 10 years ago: a_faerber originated this project.

  • Comments

    • a_faerber
      about 10 years ago by a_faerber | Reply

      Built and deployed an image, but getting "UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: HARD FAULT" when the kernel gets started

    • a_faerber
      about 10 years ago by a_faerber | Reply

      Had forgotten the -x option of mkimage (not marked as execute-in-place). By now booting to a busybox prompt! One mission accomplished.

    • a_faerber
      about 10 years ago by a_faerber | Reply

      Downstream kernel has an arch/arm/mach-stm32/ that is not in upstream, no matching device tree either - upstreaming is outside the scope of this project. On to the next one!

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