Bring up raspberry pi 3 b+

[ raspberrypi ubuntu system linux ] 04 Sep 2018

bring up raspberry pi3 b+

raspberry start boot sequence from GPU (bootcode.bin, start.elf, …) then load uboot, let uboot to init the target board ram size and storage.

1. download raspberry pi firmware and boot binary

download the raspberry binary from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware by command:

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware

2. create target sd card (USB storage)

the GPU load bootcode.bin from the first partition in target sd with FAT format, so we need create a primary partition with FAT format

3. put firmware and binary into the first FAT partition

3.0 create file partition

it can use the linux command fdisk/gdisk/sfdisk to create file partition for SD/USB storage.

for example, ubuntu at least need a rootfs partition, so it need 2 partition for the sdcard:

partition1: FAT32 - boot
partition2: ext4 - rootfs

it can use the command to create sdcard:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=1
sfdisk /dev/sdX < EOF
4096,20480,b
,,83
EOF

mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sdX1
fatlabel /dev/sdX1 BOOT
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2 -Lrootfs

3.1 GPU firmware and binary

the boot partition need binaries to boot the target board:

bootcode.bin
start.elf start_x.elf start_db.elf start_cd.elf
fixup.dat fixup_x.dat fixup_db.dat fixup_cd.dat
config.txt
cmdline.txt
(optional, if you want to boot from u-boot) u-boot.bin
kernel image (kernel8.img)
device tree

the most files are stored in firmware/boot, you can copy these files to boot partition:

cp firmware/boot/bootcode.bin <boot>/
cp firmware/boot/start*.elf <boot>/
cp firmware/boot/fixup*.dat <boot>/

the config.txt and cmdline.txt are not stored in the github firmware repository, it will stored in my personal github repository: https://github.com/fusigi0930

git clone https://github.com/fusigi0930/rpi-build

then copy the config.txt and cmdline.txt into boot partition:

cp rpi-build/config-ubuntu.txt <boot>/
cp rpi-build/cmdline-ubuntu.txt <boot>/

3.2 u-boot for CPU

(optional) because GPU bootcode also configure RAM size, storage, …; we can use the config.txt and cmdline.txt to load kernel directly.

it also can download the u-boot source from github mirror:

git clone https://github.com/fusigi0930/rpi-uboot

and build u-boot:

cd rpi-uboot
export ARCH=arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
make rpi_3_defconfig
make

3.3 kernel for CPU

download the kernel for raspberry pi3 b+ from github:

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux -b rpi-4.14.y kernel

build the kernel and device tree:

cd kernel
export ARCH=arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
make bcmrpi3_defconfig
make -j8

then copy the output binary to boot partition:

cd kernel/arch/arm64/boot/
cp Image <boot>/kernel8.img
cp dts/bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb <boot>

4. set the config.txt file for GPU bootcode

the config.txt is used by bootcode and it will load start.elf, the following is the example to boot a ubuntu system:

kernel=kernel8.img
arm_64bit=1
device_tree=bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb
framebuffer_depth=16
start_x=1
enable_uart=1
core_freq=400
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
framebuffer_swap=1
disable_overscan=1
gpu_mem=64

5. set the cmdline.txt file for kernel ccmdline

the cmdline is the kernel boot cmdline, it will be passed from start.elf, the following is the example for ubuntu system:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait loglevel=7 net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0

6. put the relate os rootfs

for example, the ubuntu-base rootfs can be downloaded from canonical web site:

6.1. ubuntu base

wget cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/ubuntu-base/bionic/daily/current/bionic-baed-arm64.tar.gz
wget cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/ubuntu-base/release/bionic/release/ubuntu-base-18.04-base-arm64.tar.gz

extract the rootfs tarball to rootfs partition:

tar xzvf bionic-base-arm64.tar.gz --directory=<rootfs>
sync

6.2 ubuntu server

the ubuntu server usually provided by using ISO format, we have to download the iso file first, for example:

wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/bionic/daily/current/bionic-server-arm64.iso

and extract the rootfs from iso file:

sudo mount -o loop bionic-server-arm64.iso temp
sudo unsquashfs -d roofs temp/install/filesystem.squashfs
sudo cp rootfs <rootfs mount point> -rfa

after the setup, it can get a ubuntu 18.04 (base) for raspberry pi3 b+

Appendix

reference site

https://github.com/sakaki-/gentoo-on-rpi3-64bit

ChuYuan Chiang