Linux From Scratch on the Raspberry Pi

[Mogwai]

I've seen a few people asking about http://www.linuxfromscratch.org on the Pi so I started a site just for you:

http://www.intestinate.com/pilfs

Hope someone likes it!

[asb]

This looks great, thanks for sharing.

[bud-pnq]

This is exactly what I needed thank you. I'm waiting for easier tutorials on your website.

[roynay2]

My very own distro; this may get me over the hump -!

[Serac]

I've seen a few people asking about http://www.linuxfromscratch.org on the Pi

OMG... masochists in our midst..

LFS is a great way to learn about the nitty-gritty of building and installing Linux, and the leasons learned will stay with you for a (very) long time - Remember doing an LFS build on an x86 800MHz box which took about a whole week... Think it might take a bit longer than that on a Pi, but still worth doing, if nothing more than an educational exercise.

Once done with LFS, you gotta go for a full BLFS install

[Mogwai]

OMG... masochists in our midst..

LFS is a great way to learn about the nitty-gritty of building and installing Linux, and the leasons learned will stay with you for a (very) long time - Remember doing an LFS build on an x86 800MHz box which took about a whole week... Think it might take a bit longer than that on a Pi, but still worth doing, if nothing more than an educational exercise.

Haha, I admit it does take a bit of a control freak to attempt putting together your own distro.
The build time is just a couple of days though

[keylevel]

The build time is just a couple of days though

You just need a decent build system I can build 'Poky' (see https://yoctoproject.org) in about 56 minutes on a system with 4GHz quad core (with hyper threading), 16GB RAM and SSD. This gives a complete distro (kernel, etc.) and I found it much, much easier to use. It provides a complete cross-tools / build environment (built from source) so it's easy to add libraries, applications, etc. once you've got the basic image running.

[Mogwai]

You just need a decent build system I can build 'Poky' (see https://yoctoproject.org) in about 56 minutes on a system with 4GHz quad core (with hyper threading), 16GB RAM and SSD. This gives a complete distro (kernel, etc.) and I found it much, much easier to use. It provides a complete cross-tools / build environment (built from source) so it's easy to add libraries, applications, etc. once you've got the basic image running.

That looks really cool! I'd love to see a Raspberry Pi specific guide to building with Yocto, with recipes for the kernel and XBMC etc.

[fos]

Very nice!

I will need another SD card to experiment with. I use it at home on an old via board.

Thank you!

Jeff

[keylevel]

That looks really cool! I'd love to see a Raspberry Pi specific guide to building with Yocto, with recipes for the kernel and XBMC etc.

There is a project on Github (https://github.com/djwillis/meta-raspberrypi) that provides a basic (for now) BSP (Board Support Package) for the RPi. This pulls in the official kernel from https://github.com/raspberrypi. It's still very much work-in-progress, but it does allow you to build a set of files (firmware, kernel, root fs) that will give you a running system.

There is a lot of recipe support for other bits and the core is compatible with OpenEmbedded (http://openembedded.org) so recipes from it can be used as well.

It fairly easy to create your own recipe if there is a package you need which isn't already supported. I use these for my own custom auto-tooled projects and it only takes a few lines of recipe to get something that builds. Qemu is also supported (as another 'BSP'), which means you can do all the build and test work on a more powerful system (saves a lot of time) and then simply switch to target the RPi when you're happy it's ready to deploy. All the cross-tools needed for this are 'included' (they are built as needed) within Yocto.

It's probably worth me putting in a request to set up a forum for Yocto so that I can (when I get some time!) add some basic instructions. General use and configuration of Yocto is well covered by the documentation on the Yocto site (much better than OpenEmbedded, which is why I use it).

[Mogwai]

Update:
I put up a showcase SD-card image for people who just want to test drive an LFS system with some nice apps. Comes with OMXPlayer, XBMC, RetroArch, Quake3, a minimal Razor-QT + Openbox desktop environment and the QupZilla web browser.

If you have a spare card around, please give it a try and let me know how it compares to your distribution of choice and what software you'd like to see in the next image.

[fos]

If you need donations for contributions to help with R Pi LFS, please let me know.

Thanks for your hard work,

Jeff

[Mogwai]

If you need donations for contributions to help with R Pi LFS, please let me know.

Thanks for your hard work,

Jeff

Thanks Jeff, appreciate it!
Right now, hosting the PiLFS project is completely free.
However, there would be no PiLFS without the original LFS project.
So please consider making a small donation on their page: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/contribute.html

[scm]

I've been playing with Freescale's Linux Target Image Builder (LTIB - http://ltib.org/) in order to cross-compile my own Linux distro for the Raspi.

My ultimate goal was to have an environment in which I could cross-compile packages for the Pi which had various and several prerequisites, and things would magically link against the proper libs, use the proper headers, etc. LTIB gives you a lot of that for free.

In any case, I've made some progress. I've successfully built a rootfs image (including a kernel and BusyBox) on my x86 desktop that I plan to try and boot on a Pi when I get home in a few hours. If there's enough interest, I'll look into cleaning it up and sharing with the community.

[scm]

To clarify, I meant that I would clean up and share my LTIB and cross-compiler configs if there was interest.

[Mogwai]

Another update:
New and improved showcase image online, includes the following software:

• OMXPlayer - With support for .srt subtitles.
• YT - YouTube Console Client
• XBMC - With support for CEC, Avahi, Samba & SSH
• RetroArch / EmulationStation - With emulators for NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis, Game Boy & Neo Geo (Final Burn Alpha)
• Razor-QT + Fluxbox - Minimal desktop with QupZilla web browser.
• Quake3

Please give it a spin and let me know!

[bud-pnq]

Great!!

[krate2000]

This looks great - added to my ever growing list of things to play with on my Pi!!

[pallots]

Hi,
thanks for the showcase image you made. it works but I m not able to log in because I dont know the log in. the password is mentioned but not the log in. thanks in advance.bye

[Mogwai]

Hi,
thanks for the showcase image you made. it works but I m not able to log in because I dont know the log in. the password is mentioned but not the log in. thanks in advance.bye

Ah, sorry about that.
Login is "root"
Password is "pilfs"

[sraue]

You just need a decent build system I can build 'Poky' (see https://yoctoproject.org) in about 56 minutes on a system with 4GHz quad core (with hyper threading), 16GB RAM and SSD. This gives a complete distro (kernel, etc.) and I found it much, much easier to use. It provides a complete cross-tools / build environment (built from source) so it's easy to add libraries, applications, etc. once you've got the basic image running.

a bit late for a comment about this:

That looks really cool! I'd love to see a Raspberry Pi specific guide to building with Yocto, with recipes for the kernel and XBMC etc.

thats basically what OpenELEC (www.openelec.tv) is or provides