Developing your AOS project on Linux

Many CSE students have Linux machines which they would like to be able to use to work away from the CSE labs. The following is a guide as to how to set up the necessary drivers/software if you wish to work locally. These instructions will be distribution specific (for Ubuntu) but they should at least give you an idea of how to set up other distributions.

The components you will need to install are:

• Cross compilers
• Driver for the USB->serial converter
• A serial terminal program (we recommend picocom)
• TFTP server
• time server
• An NFS server/share
• netcat

Ubuntu Instructions

Based on Ubuntu 14.04.

Cross compilers

The Ubuntu default version of gcc-arm seems to work fine.

apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi

NOTE: After checking out the AOS codebase, you will need to change the cross compiler prefix to arm-linux-gnueabi-. Do this by running make menuconfig from the checked out check out source directory, and then going to Toolchain Options.

Installing drivers

The Ubuntu USB serial and USB ethernet drivers seem to work by default.

You may need to install some of the following packages:

apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install git
apt-get install libncurses5-dev
apt-get install netcat.traditional
update-alternatives --set nc /bin/nc.traditional
apt-get install picocom minicom
apt-get install tftpd-hpa tftp-hpa
apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
apt-get install xinetd
apt-get install libxml2-utils
apt-get install python-tempita
apt-get install realpath

Setting up the network

Add the following lines to /etc/network/interfaces:

iface eth1 inet static
    address 192.168.168.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0

sudo ifup eth1

Setting up the TFTP server

After installing the tftpd-hpa package, the default Ubuntu tftp directory will be /var/lib/tftpboot. You will either need to modify our helper scripts to match the new default, or modify /etc/default/tftpd-hpa, i.e. change TFTP_DIRECTORY to match our source.

You may need to adjust ownership and/or permissions to allow you access to the directory (e.g. chmod a+rwx /var/lib/tftpboot if you are in a benign environment.

Our source expects the tftp directory to be /var/tftpboot/$USER.

Setting up the time server

Configure xinetd to serve time by editing /etc/xinetd.d/time to set disable = no, and restart via sudo service xinetd restart.

# default: off
# description: An RFC 868 time server. This protocol provides a
# site-independent, machine readable date and time. The Time service sends back
# to the originating source the time in seconds since midnight on January first
# 1900.
# This is the tcp version.
service time
{
        disable         = no
        type            = INTERNAL
        id              = time-stream
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcpar
        user            = root
        wait            = no
}

# This is the udp version.
service time
{
        disable         = no
        type            = INTERNAL
        id              = time-dgram
        socket_type     = dgram
        protocol        = udp
        user            = root
        wait            = yes
}

Apparently, for some versions of ubuntu there was no obvious ways to coerce xinetd into serving TIME. On the other hand, it's a 5-line Java program, so writing a server for it is left as an exercise to the reader. Have a read of this.

Set up an NFS share

Make sure NFS server is installed:

$ apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common

/var/tftpboot/USERNAME 192.168.168.2(rw,sync,all_squash,subtree_check,anonuid=UID,anongid=GID)

Serial Line Access

Add your account to group dialout to give access to /dev/ttyUSB0. You'll need to logout and back in to update your groups. If you skip this minicom may need root permissions to run.