Documentation on how to build and test?

[abrightwell]

Would it be possible to add some documentation on how to build/test this project?

[daxj]

Ooo, yes! I strongly second abrightwell's notion: that would be a great help for numpties like me who enjoy using your superb images but could do with a simple guide on how to tweek it a little. Especially helpful to me would be a note on how/when in the build sequence we could run "make menuconfig" or similar to setup extra kernel options we might like to play with.

[bamarni]

I didn't focus on that yet but that would be nice indeed.

The simplest way is through docker :

git clone https://github.com/bamarni/pi64.git
cd pi64
docker build -t pi64 .
docker run --privileged -v $PWD:/root/build -w /root/build pi64 make build/pi64-lite.zip

This should build the pi64 lite archive inside the build directory.

Otherwise, if you want to build on your host directly, ubuntu / debian is recommended (I don't know if / how it'd work with other distros), then just take a look at this file to make sure you have a similar setup : https://github.com/bamarni/pi64/blob/master/Dockerfile, and run the same make command.

[bamarni]

As for the kernel config there is no interactive menu, it just expects the config to be in make/kernel-config.txt

[Kosmatik]

pi64-update's main.go is missing os/exec in import. I also had to set a bunch of paths in /etc/sudoers and ~/.profile to get this thing to build on ubuntu 17.04, but finally got it!

[daxj]

I've just tried building this on a totally fresh and squeaky-clean install of the latest 64bit lubuntu running in an Oracle VM VirtualBox. It looked to get quite far but failed at:

<snip>
pi64-build -build-dir ./build -version lite
Creating build directory...
Creating image...
   Mapping partitions...
exit status 1
Makefile:6: recipe for target 'build/pi64-lite.zip' failed
make: *** [build/pi64-lite.zip] Error 1

I'm new to the world of Linux and Pi so please bear with me if I'm doing something utterly stoopid!

These are the steps I tried, from a fresh copy of lubuntu:

Installed Docker

sudo apt-get -y install curl git
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install docker-ce
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
su - ${USER}

Setup Docker's DNS I found docker wasn't able to resolve web addresses, perhaps something to do with running in a VM(?). Specifying the DNS in docker, however, seemed to allow it to work okay. I made a new config file: sudo nano /etc/docker/daemon.json and entered the following

{   
  "dns": ["8.8.4.4", "8.8.8.8"]
}

Then restarted docker for it to take effect: sudo service docker restart

Cloned Bamarni's Superb Scripts

git clone https://github.com/bamarni/pi64.git
cd pi64

Made a couple of changes to Dockerfile

• Added libncurses5-devto the installed packages
• Added TERM=xterm to end of ENV line
• Added && go get -u golang.org/x/crypto/openpgp to end of RUN line

Made a couple of changes to make/Linux-src

• Changed mkdir -p build && cd build to mkdir -p build/boot-$version && cd build
• Added make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- menuconfig after the line that looks like make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- olddefconfig

Made one change to cmd/pi64-update/main.go Thanks to @Kosmatik for the heads-up here.

• Added "os/exec" to the import list

Built the docker container docker build -t pi64 .

Entered the container docker run -it pi64

Launched the scripts make build/pi64-lite.zip version=lite

Not sure why I couldn't just run "make build/pi64-lite.zip" without the version variable but, when I tried without, it looked to be blank when Linux-src ran.

If anyone can help me get any further then that'd be marvellous!

[bamarni]

@daxj : There are some capabilities needed in order to use loopback devices for example, I'm just using the --privileged flag when running docker run to be sure I have everything.

Also yeah there might be a few missing pieces in the master branch as it's still wip, if you use the latest tag that sould be more stable.

[daxj]

Hazzah!

Many thanks, bamarni, for your quick response. I can confirm that I was able to compile an image to completion with the above steps (including the menuconfig step) once I corrected the docker run command as you suggested. After changing the command to: docker run -it --privileged -v $PWD:/root/build -w /root/build pi64 a pi64-lite.zip was successfully created, which I'll test tomorrow.

Fingers crossed. :-)