Linaro is doing a great job improving Linux on ARM and its toolchain is amazing. I’ve been using it as my primary ARM compiler for some time so I wanted to install it on my Fedora 16 box.

They don’t provide RPMs of their tools so you have to either compile it from source or use Michael Hope LSB compatible prebuilt binaries.

For anyone insterested here is a mini-how:

$ yum install redhat-lsb.i686
$ wget -c http://people.linaro.org/~michaelh/incoming/binaries/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabi-2012.01-20120112+bzr2334~linux.tar.bz2
$ tar -xvf gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabi-2012.01-20120112+bzr2334~linux.tar.bz2
$ mv gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabi-2012.01-20120112+bzr2334~linux /opt/gcc-linaro
$ echo "export PATH=\$PATH:/opt/gcc-linaro/bin" > /etc/profile.d/gcc-linaro.sh

This is a question a I got a lot. Today I saw the question What’s the best way to learn device driver development on Linux? on Quora  so I spent a few minutes answering it.

The answer finally was longer than I thought so I decide that it was worth a post. I don’t know if this is the best approach to learn Linux kernel development and get involved, but is the one I recommend nowadays.

I for example didn’t follow these steps, I got involved first watching Greg KH’s Write and Submit your first Linux kernel Patch excellent video. After that I realized that anyone (even me) could contribute to the Linux kernel so I cloned the linux-next integration tree, compiled and started sending trivial one-liners patches.

But, after getting a job as a Linux Kernel Engineer and being contributing to the kernel for some time now I realized that there is a better and more fun way to get involved. Obviously device drivers is the best way to get involved for two reasons.

First, unless you are a PhD student doing research on operating systems. It is very unlikely that you will came with a brilliant idea an start hacking the Linux kernel virtual memory or block device subsystem. The Linux kernel has 20 years of development and its core is very, very complex. Second, it is more probable that your first job as a Linux kernel developer will be to write device drivers.

But, whatever is the way you chose to get involved, there is a step you can’t skip and is to learn the theory behind operating systems in general and the Linux kernel in particular. So if you don’t know about operating systems, I recommend you to read Willam Stalling’s OS book. This book has a more hardware oriented approach unlike other OS books that focus more on the algorithms and data structures used in operating systems than explaining with examples how things work in the real world.

After having a high level overview of operating systems, you have to learn about Linux kernel development. Robert Love’s Linux Kernel Development book is for me the best one on the subject. You can learn not only about Linux kernel development, but also the motivations behind the technical decisions that lead to the design.

Then you have to learn about device drivers development on Linux, two books that are very good are Linux Device Drivers and Essential Linux Device Drivers. This two books are complementary. The former teaches how to write virtual device drivers for memory based devices, so you can try the examples without the need of special hardware. While the latter shows you how device drives for real devices are actually written. I maintain an up-to-date repository with all LDD3 examples so you can compile and test on recent kernels.

Once you have the theory you can begin with the practice by writing real device drivers. You need a hardware that still is not supported on Linux. The good news is that you probably already have on of this devices.

With the popularity of the Android platform, is very likely that you own an Android device. Even when Android is a Linux-based operating system, Google by a design decision forked the Linux kernel and added some APIs that don’t exist on the Linux kernel. These APIs are used by device drivers and for that reason, a developer has to choose whether to write a device driver for Android or Linux.

So, porting Android device drivers to Linux is an excellent opportunity to learn device driver development skills, the Linux kernel development process and how to work with the Linux community while doing something useful.

A final comment, when asking questions to kernel developers on public mailing lists, remember to do your homework and researched first. They tend to be very polite and collaborative with people that show signs that they tried to understand the problem first before to ask, but can be a little grumpy with people that ask first before even tried to understand the problem.

Also, don’t be afraid to contact the developers that wrote the Android version device driver. They usually are working for the company that build the hardware of were contracted by them. Usually both the company and the original developer also want the driver to be merged on the Linux kernel but they don’t have neither the time nor the resources to do it.

So, if you offer them to help and your time to modify the driver to be in an merge-able state, they will be more than happy to help you finish the task. This is important because you probably will need the hardware datasheet or at least information about the people that know well the hardware.

Happy hacking!

On the last post I told that I’m working on Cypress TrueTouch(tm) touchscreen driver for mainline inclusion.

So to work in a driver first you need to compile a Linux (or Android) kernel. Since I don’t have a fully functional Linux kernel for the Nook Color, I’m developing against an Android kernel.

I want to document how to build your own Android kernel for two reasons. First someone could find it useful. Second, I wanted to document the process for myself. I context switch more than I would like and when I comeback to something I didn’t do in a few days, I have to remember what are the exact commands to build the uImage, what is the defconfig file I use to build each kernel, etc. This happens even more with my hobbyists projects since I don’t work with them on a daily basis.

So these are the steps to build a custom Android kernel for your Nook Color:

1- Installing CyangenMod (CM7) on an SD card:

First you have to decide if you want to install your kernel on your boot partition of your nand memory or using an external SD card. I prefer to only install stable software on my nand so I did an CM7 installation on an SD card and used that for development.

To install a CM7 on your SD card first download and gunzip the generic sd card image.

$ wget http://nook.handhelds.ru/sdimage/generic-sdcard-v1.3.img.gz

$ gunzip generic-sdcard-v1.3.img.gz

Then insert your SD card and copy the image to your SD card:

$ dd if=generic-sdcard-v1.3.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1024

Where X is the block device name for your SD card. To know which block device is associated with your SD card, insert your card and look the kernel log messages with dmesg for example.
After done with writing eject and insert again your SD card on your computer. Download a nightly build of CM7 for the Nook from http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?device=encore I’m using -153 but I guess that a newer or older should work either.

$ wget http://download.cyanogenmod.com/get/cm_encore_full-153.zip

One the file has been downloaded, copy it to the SD card. There should be only one partition on the SD.

$ mount /dev/sdX1 /media/boot

$ cp cm_encore_full-153 /media/boot

That’s all, now unmount the SD card, insert it on the Nook and power off. The generic image will find and update file and automatically start CM7 installation. The process will re-partition your SD card and copy all the necessary files in each of them (x-loader MLO, uBoot u-boot.bin, kernel image and ramdisk in the boot partition, binaries and libraries in the rootfs partition, etc).
Once the installation is complete the Nook will power off and you have a fully functional CM7 installation on your SD card. The Nook Color has boot sequence when the SD card has higher precedence than the nand memory. If the SD card is inserted, the Nook will attempt to boot from there. So with the SD inserted, just turn on again the Nook an CM7 will boot from there.
That is, you now have a system to test your newer kernel.

2- Instal a ARM cross-compiling tool-chain

Since the Nook has an ARM processor and it is unlikely that your host machine is ARM base, you will need to install an ARM cross-compiling tool-chain to compile ARM Android images.
You can install different cross tool-chains both from source code and using pre-compiled packages for your host machine distribution. For example to install Linaro’s GCC cross tool-chain you can use the following command on Debian and Debian-based distros (such as Ubuntu):

$ apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi

3- Obtaining and compiling an Android kernel

Now you need CM7 Android kernel, this can be found in Dalingrin github repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/dalingrin/nook_kernel.git

Now you have to checkout a local branch for your work:

$ cd nook_kernel

$ git checkout -b devel origin/encore-32

Now you have a local branch devel to do your kernel development.
Do all the modifications you wish to the Android kernel and to compile your kernel first generate a .config file from the Nook Color defconfig file:

$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-  omap3621_evt1a_defconfig

This will generate a .config file that contains all the symbols needed to compile Nook Color’s board file and needed drivers. You can customize the build with:

$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-  menuconfig

Once your kernel compilation is customized you can generate the kernel image with the following command:

$ make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-  uImage

Once it finish compiling, the uImage is located in arch/arm/boot/uImage.
The last step is to copy the uImage on the SD card. I prefer to mount the SD boot partition in the Nook Color using ssh or adb commands and copy the uImage using scp, but this setup will be explained in other article. Another option is to remove the SD card from the Nook, insert on your host machine, mounting the boot partition and copy the image:

$ mount /dev/sdX1 /media/boot

$ cp arch/arm/boot/uImage /media/boot

That is, now you can insert the SD card on your Nook Color and boot your customized Android kernel.

Happy Hacking!!

I own an Barnes & Nobles Nook Color e-reader. It is a fantastic device that can be rooted easily and used as a tablet pc.

Besides using with Android I wanted to install Linux on it, but there isn’t a fully functional Linux kernel for the Nook. So I contacted Oleg Drokin (a.k.a verygreen) and William Marone (a.k.a wmarone) that were working in porting Nook Color’s Android drivers to Linux.

I pick the task to work on the Cypress TrueTouch ™ touchscreen driver for upstream inclusion. I knew that Kevin McNeely from Cypress submitted a patch-set for a newer and better designed driver for the TrueTouch family. I contacted Kevin asking if I could take that patch-set as a starting point for the driver and what modifications were needed for the driver to be accepted.

Kevin kindly told me that a requirement was to modify the driver to use a different multi-touch protocol type from the one the driver had. So I modified the driver to use the newer multi-touch protocol type B. Kevin also gave me guidance, advice and code when I didn’t understand the driver internals.

I posted a patch-set which was reviewed and a few issues were found. Again Kevin point me out what modifications are necessaries to fix these issues.

So that is what I’m working on in my free time. I’ll keep modifying the driver and resubmitting the code until the patch is merged or Kevin and the folks from linux-input get tired of me.

This post is now longer than I would like, but I wanted to tell the full story to show the power of open source. I own a hardware that doesn’t meet all my needs, I’m able to hack the device, modify it at my will and find help both from hobbyists and companies like Cypress and its engineers.

I think this is the best moment in history to be an engineer, 20 years ago one could only dream of having a modern operating system such as Linux or Android with its complete source code to read, understand and modify.

I know I want to be a FOSS hacker all my life. I don’t think there could be a better way to build high quality software such as Linux.

It is incredible how time flies. I just realized that I have been hanging with computers for ten years now. Looking back I’m kind of happy with my achievements. I got two academic degrees, a B.S in Computer Engineering and a M.S in High Performance Computer.

I have worked in many sectors doing different things. I have administered Linux servers, developed ERP systems for wholesale companies, design and developed enterprise mobile applications and location based services for a telco and even build a data-warehouse and a GIS for a distribution company.

Also, I’ve worked in Academia as a researcher, developing a performance analysis and estimation tool for parallel applications running in Linux clusters and published papers in international conferences.

I also contributed to my favorite open source project, the Linux kernel with 65+ patches pushed to mainline.

But the best of all is that I have finally realized what I want to do, I think I’ve found my path. I realized that I want to become a full-time FOSS hacker. My experience contributing to open source and working both in the industry and the academia, has showed me that it is near impossible to build proprietary (or academic) systems with the same quality of their open source counterparts.

As Eric Raymond said, “With many eyes, all bugs become shallow”. But not only the eyes but also the passion that open source developers put to their work and the high level of scrutiny to the code you post.

Also I see open source as a vehicle to do research, as Dirk Hohndel of Intel said, “open source is the shortest path to innovation”.

Also, the possibility that your work will be used by millions of people really inspire me. The good news is that because of my previous work with the Linux kernel, a company offered me a job to work full time as an Linux embedded engineer. That means I will be doing not only Linux kernel development but also Linux user space development and even boot-loader development!

I had to make a huge decision. Today I quit as a researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and give up my scholarship for PhD studies. I had the pleasure to work with very smart people while doing research. I’d like to thank my advisors, Dr Emilio Luque and Dr. Dolores Rexachs and fellows at the Computer Architecture and Operating Systems department at UAB.
But I think my decision is correct given the path I choose.

I will work hard and do my best to achieve all my goals in this new adventure. As Linus Torvalds said “Its no the great ideas that bring innovation, its sweat and hard work”

So from now on expect me to post more about Linux kernel development, embedded systems, C programming and things like that!