Raspberry Pi Buildroot – 3.8.6 Kernel Branch

I’ve added a new branch to rpi-buildroot. The 3.8 branch uses the new 3.8.6 Linux kernel provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

This distro is based on Buildroot, that means it very flexible and well suited for numerous customized embedded linux applications. Makers will find it extremely useful since it can be used to create powerful custom deployments – Want to control a robot using a Raspberry Pi? then this is the distro for you – Please keep in mind that the default configuration builds a system with nothing more than the bare essentials.

Please checkout the README file for more information.

You may download the test-drive SD-card image here: http://dl.guillermoamaral.com/rpi/sdcard-3.8.img.xz (user root – no password)

How to build it yourself!

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  git clone --depth 1 -b rpi-3.8 git://github.com/gamaral/rpi-buildroot.git
  cd rpi-buildroot
  make raspberrypi_defconfig
  make

How to flash

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  wget http://dl.guillermoamaral.com/rpi/sdcard-3.8.img.xz
  xz -d sdcard-3.8.img.xz
  sudo dd if=sdcard-3.8.img of=/dev/**YOUR-DEV-NODE**

About the author : gamaral

Incredibly handsome open-source software engineer, gamedev and trekkie. I also draw comics in my spare time; they aren't very popular.

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26 comments

  1. David

    Finally a distribution that doesn’t hog up so much disk space! Unfortunately, networking support does not seem to be working for me. I see that OpenSSH is on the image, but the Pi never responds to ping, never seems to emit a single packet over ethernet, or get an IP address. No idea what’s going on since I don’t have a monitor to use with it.


    1. Author
      gamaral

      That’s odd, on first run it sends a dhcp request and starts sshd for you. You might want to get yourself a USB to TTL Serial Cable. That way you don’t need a monitor. :)

      Which branch did you checkout? if you checked out the marshmallow_h branch, it will not turn on networking (it just runs my game engine demo ATM).

  2. JustJanek

    The Test drive image works like a charm but when I try to build one myself I just can’t seem to get anything going on on the monitor. Am I missing some important package to enable HDMI?


    1. Author
      gamaral

      That’s pretty weird, it should just work. maybe you cloned the marshmallow entertainment system branch on github? That one does indeed lack HDMI console support.

      1. JustJanek

        Yep, you were right. I cloned the wrong branch. My bad, need to read more on how to use git. :x

        Nevertheless, the system is great and exactly what I was searching for, thanks!

  3. Bill

    I’m having the same problem as David: eth0 never connects and sshd does not start. I am using the sdcard image downloaded today 9/5/13. Is there a module(s) I need to load? I use UART0 for something else besides a terminal so I disable ttyAMA0.

    Great job. If I can get past this ssh issue I think this will be the ticket!!!!

    Bill


    1. Author
      gamaral

      I think the image you’re using comes with udhcpc, so you only need to add the appropriate entries for eth0 in /etc/network/interfaces.

      You should add something like this:

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      auto eth0
      iface eth0 inet dhcp

  4. goooofy

    Great work! The new image boots up nicely, but i have one issue with it:

    my usb keyboard is not working

    when i plug it in I see these messages on the console:

    new low-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg New USB device found, idVendor=046a, idProduct=0023 New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0

    it doesn’t seem to recognize it as a HID device, let alone a keyboard. it is a fairly standard cherry type G230 USB keyboard. Any idea what could be causing this?

    1. Dawid

      I have same issue, keyboard doesn’t work. I compiled recent version (revision de019fb4fb08bec4cd5d1ee6d4df221bed7245f4).


      1. Author
        gamaral

        I would suggest trying the same thing as my other comment, if you can send me your dmesg and/or lsusb output, that would be very helpful. :)


    2. Author
      gamaral

      Yeah that’s pretty odd, have you tried using one of the newer kernel config files while building? You can also try using the bcmrpi_defconfig for the kernel (rpi-buildroot currently uses bcmpri_quick_defconfig).

      1. Dawid

        Ok, I trying to compilie with bcmrpi_defconfig in .config.

        What you mean by “newer kernel config files”?

        Thank you for answer


        1. Author
          gamaral

          In the rpi-buildroot configs directory, you’ll find config files named **raspberrypi-3._defconfig**, they are for the different kernel versions supported by the RPi team.

      1. lpsantil

        I found this example (http://free-electrons.com/blog/super-fast-linux-splashscreen/). How soon in inittab could I put that. Before the mount commands?


        1. Author
          gamaral

          Probably not before unless you use something like initramfs. You may want to add it into rc.d instead since you’ll have much better control of when to execute it. :)

  5. Sam

    Hmm I’ve tried many option but I fail to have the network started automatically.

    Any idea how I can have it started automatically ? Great job by the way, thanks. Sam

  6. David Veerman

    Trying and failing to get USB drive support in RPI-Buildroot. Having problems with Museveni and module loading.

    See http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/13612/rpi-buildroot-usb-drive?noredirect=1#comment19213_13612

  7. David Stevenson

    Hi and thanks for making it all so easy. I have a problem getting rid of kernel messages on the serial, I have removed all references to ama0 in the cmdline in config.txt, and I have altered inittab to run my application only no tty. But I still get kernel output at 115200 at boot, my app runs at 9600. Do you kow where else the serial is set up to 115200?

  8. Adrian

    Hola Guillermo.

    Lo primero de todo quiero felicitarte por tu trabajo y por tus aportaciones, ya que son de gran ayuda para nosotros. He probado tu imagen y funciona realmente rápida.

    Ahora tengo un problema pendiente: necesito hacer funcionar la cámara de la RPi, y la verdad no he encontrado demasiada información sobre el tema.

    Por eso quería preguntarte si sabes alguna forma de incluir esta funcionalidad. Por lo que he visto, los ejecutables están en https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/tree/master/opt/vc/bin

    ¿Sabes como puedo incluir este módulo en un sistema de ficheros como el tuyo con buildroot?

    Muchas gracias de antemano por la información, un gran saludo. Adrian.


    1. Author
      gamaral

      Hi Adrian,

      You’re in luck, if you build buildroot-rpi from github, it has RPi camera support. Just remember to uncomment the start_x and fixup_x files in the config.txt file.

  9. arief

    Hello, i am interesting about this post of article. I want to ask something, how to create .img file for sdcard-3.8.img ? thank you :)

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