Building Ostro (TM) OS XT

Introduction

Ostro (TM) OS XT is an "eXTended" Linux* distribution derived from Ostro OS. It differs from Ostro OS in several ways. Ostro OS XT:

• targets a specific device based on a Broxton SOC
• enables X11 and the XFCE desktop environment
• adds support for certain hardware features (RealSense, OpenCV, OpenCL)
• adds extra tools and libraries (for example, clang)

This document gives instructions on how to use this repository and build an Ostro (TM) OS XT image.

Installing Docker on Linux

You’ll need Docker installed to build locally. Using Docker provides a packaged and controlled environment for building an Ostro OS XT image, eliminating development environment issues that can occur with differing Linux OS distros and versions, different host compilers, and such. (There are instructions later below for building without Docker.)

Instructions for installing Docker for common Linux distros on your development machine (including Fedora and Ubuntu) are available at: https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux

Follow the instructions for your particular distro. You should also perform some of listed Optional Docker Configuration settings:

• Add your Linux user account into the Docker system group with:

  $ sudo gpasswd -a ${USER} docker
  

  You’ll need to log out and back in for this change to take effect.

• Inside company firewalls, you’ll need to configure proxies. Follow the instructions for Docker at https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/systemd/#http-proxy and also set the usual environment variables:

  $ export http_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:<port>
  $ export https_proxy=https://proxy.example.com:<port>
  $ export ALL_PROXY=socks://proxy.example.com:<port>
  

• Some distributions such as Ubuntu require you to manually configure the DNS server for Docker. This can be done by adding --dns <dns-server-ip-address> to the Docker daemon startup parameters in /etc/default/docker. (Check your /etc/resolv.conf file for system’s specific DNS settings.) More information is available here (note that Ubuntu 15.10 and later use systemd):

  • https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/configuring/
  • https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/networking/configure-dns/

Building with Docker

These instructions assume you’ll be working with the sources in a ~/work/ostro-os-xt directory that you’ll be creating.

Start by cloning the GitHub repos. If you have a previous copy of this repository without all the submodules, it would be best to remove all the content of workspace directory and clone it again:

$ export WORKSPACE=$HOME/work/ostro-os-xt
$ mkdir -p $WORKSPACE
$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/ostroproject/ostro-os-xt .

When Docker is configured properly and all project code is cloned and available locally, it's time to trigger a build. To do this run the command from within the ~/work/ostro-os-xt directory:

$ docker/local-build.sh

Building without Docker

While not recommended, you can also use Yocto Project bitbake directly. (Any issues you encounter building this way might not be easily reproducible and debuggable by other developers using a different distribution.)

Here are the basic steps:

$ export WORKSPACE=$HOME/work/ostro-os-xt
$ mkdir -p $WORKSPACE
$ cd $WORKSPACE
$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/ostroproject/ostro-os-xt .
$ source ostro-init-build-env
$ bitbake ostro-xt-image-noswupd

Updating Repositories

You may need to pull new content from the GitHub repo as it’s updated. Use the following commands:

$ git pull
$ git submodule update

For more information about Git submodule commands, check this link: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-submodule

Installation onto platform's internal storage

By default, the generated images contain an installer script that lets you (optionally) flash internal storage or continue to boot a live system from the USB stick.

The installer waits for user's input from the serial console. If there's no input for 15 seconds, the installer skips and the boot process continues with a live system boot on the USB stick.

Warning: Once booted as a live system, the USB stick's installer functionality is disabled.

Customizing installation media

You can configure an installation USB stick by placing special-named files onto its first FAT partition, for example by using the File Explorer on a computer running Windows* or Linux*.

• You can make the installer non-interactive by creating an empty file on the first FAT partition named either non-interactive-install or non-interactive-install.txt. This will eliminate the installer check delay and proceed directly to a live boot from the USB stick.
• You can enable remote ssh access to the device by placing a file named authorized_keys on the first FAT partition of the USB stick with the public keys of users that may have remote root ssh access. Multiple authorized keys are permitted, one per line. (You can read more about authorized keys in the Ostro OS documentation at https://ostroproject.org/documentation/howtos/authorized-keys.html.)

After you've made changes to the USB stick, eject the USB stick gracefully before unplugging to avoid image corruption.