OnRISC ELBE based Debian BSP

Debian based E.mbedded L.inux B.uild E.nvironment (ELBE) uses an XML based configuration file to create a root file system. This configuration file covers various root file system related aspects like package and repository management, binary image creation (both SD card and MTD based devices are supported) and file system finetuning (create, delete or rename files, folders etc.).

For further information visit project's home page: https://elbe-rfs.org/

ELBE Installation

You'll need a Debian Buster host in order to use ELBE. Perform the following steps:

1. mkdir /home/user/debian
2. cd /home/user/debian
3. apt install python3 python3-debian python3-mako python3-lxml python3-apt python3-gpg python3-suds python3-libvirt qemu-utils qemu-kvm p7zip-full make
4. git clone https://github.com/visionsystemsgmbh/vscom-elbe.git
5. git clone https://github.com/Linutronix/elbe.git
6. cd elbe
7. git checkout v13.3

Before you can use ELBE as a regular user, you need to add this user to the kvm/libvrt groups:

adduser <youruser> kvm
adduser <youruser> libvirt

Set up your own Debian Package Repository

First of all, you'll need to create a public key for repository signing. Invoke the following command and use default settings.

gpg --gen-key

In our example, we assume that the e-mail is configured as "user@example.com".

Download and install freight from https://github.com/freight-team/freight:

1. git clone https://github.com/freight-team/freight.git
2. cd freight
3. make && make install

Create the following folders:

• /home/user/debian/freight/lib
• /home/user/debian/freight/cache

Create a file ~/.freight.conf with the following content:

GPG="user@example.com"
VARLIB=/home/user/debian/freight/lib
VARCACHE=/home/user/debian/freight/cache
ARCHS=armhf

Create folder debs-bin near elbe and download all files from: https://www.vscom.de/download/multiio/OnRISC/Baltos/deb/bullseye/

Now you're ready to create a Debian repository structure using freight:

1. cd /home/user/debian/debs-bin
2. freight add * apt/bullseye
3. freight cache

freight will ask you the same password you gave during the public key creation. To make this repository available over network perform:

1. cd /home/user/debian/freight/cache
2. python3 -m http.server 8888

This will start a HTTP server listening on port 8888.

Building Minimal Debian Image

vscom-elbe holds various image configurations under configs. You'll need to edit configs/armhf-vscom-baltos-minimal.xml and provide the IP address of the host running the package repository you've already created. Just replace localhost with the proper IP address.

<url-list>
        <url>
                <binary>http://localhost:8888 bullseye main</binary>
                <source>http://localhost:8888 bullseye main</source>
                <key>http://localhost:8888/user@pubkey.gpg</key>
        </url>
</url-list>

To create a minimal Debian image, perform:

1. cd /home/user/debian/elbe
2. ./elbe initvm --devel create --directory=initvm
3. ./elbe initvm --skip-build-bin submit --directory=initvm ../vscom-elbe/configs/armhf-vscom-baltos-minimal.xml

Your SD card image together with build logs can be found under elbe-build-timestamp. Extract sdcard.img from sdcard.img.gz and burn it to your card (you do not need to extract the image if you use https://www.balena.io/etcher tool).

System overlay files are stored in the armhf-vscom-baltos-minimal.xml file as a tar.bz2 archive. https://elbe-rfs.org/docs/sphinx/article-quickstart.html#advanced-usage describes how to access and modify these files.

Please refer to https://elbe-rfs.org/docs/sphinx/article-elbeoverview-en.html for more details about XML configuration files and the whole building process.

Related Links

1. freight man page: http://freight-team.github.io/freight/freight.5.html