• Home
• Extension boards
• Buy

  ---

• Documentation
• How tos & FAQ
• Developers
• Newsgroups

  ---

• Pinout
• Webcompiler

Install the Phrozen SDK on Linux

This article describes how to install the Phrozen SDK for the FOX Board LX832 on your Linux systems to cross-compiling applications for the FOX Board

The Phrozen SDK is an Open Source collection of programs useful to develop applications, install device drivers and recompile the whole Linux kernel to run on the FOX Board LX832. Is is strongly based on the the standard SDK supplied by Axis (http://developer.axis.com) and an impressive number of patches, applications and utilities added by John Crispin (http://www.phrozen.biz) and a lot of others enthusiast FOX Board developers.

The last release implements the Linux kernel 2.6.15 and 2.4.31.

The Phrozen SDK is available only for the Linux operating system. For Windows XP users it is possible to use a ready to use Virtual Machine available from this page: Install the Phrozen SDK on Win XP.

For the users who don't want to install any SDK, it is possible to compile simple C applications using our Web Compiler. It is a Web interface to the GNU C compiler, running on an Acme Systems Linux server that compile on demand your C source program and reply with the executable code ready to run on your FOX Board.

System requirements

The basic requirements of your system needed to install the Phrozen SDK are:

• Linux. Any fairly new Linux distribution should work.
• An ethernet network interface.
• An active Internet connection.
• Ability to become root (some installation stages require root access).
• GCC C compiler, CRIS cross-compiler, GNU make, GNU wget, Subversion, awk (or gawk), bc, byacc (or yacc if byacc is a link to it), lex or flex, perl, sed, tar, zlib, md5sum, pmake, curses or ncurses, bison, which

Instructions to meet the basic requirements on different Linux distributions

$ sudo apt-get install libc6-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
$ sudo apt-get install pmake
$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev
$ sudo apt-get install flex
$ sudo apt-get install bison
$ sudo apt-get install subversion

$ sudo ln -sf /bin/bash /bin/sh

$ sudo ln -sf /bin/dash /bin/sh

$ su
Password: your_root_password
# dpkg -i cris-dist_1.63-1_i386.deb

$ su
Password: your_root_password
# rpm -U pmake-1.45-16.i386.rpm
# rpm -U cris-dist-1.63-1.i386.rpm

$ sudo apt-get install subversion

$ su
Password: your_root_password
# dpkg -i pmake_1.98-3_i386.deb
# dpkg -i cris-dist_1.63-1_i386.deb

$ su
Password: your_root_password
# installpkg pmake-1.45-i386-16fib.tgz
# installpkg cris-dist_1.63-1_i386-1fib.tgz

SDK installation procedure

install_svn_sdk.sh

As an alternative way to get this install script, from inside your workstation text Linux console session, instead invoke this command from inside a new directory where it will be stored your new SDK :

# wget http://www.acmesystems.it/download/install_svn_sdk.sh

Make it executable and run it:

# chmod +x install_svn_sdk.sh
# ./install_svn_sdk.sh
...

After a while (some minutes to download the necessary packages and install them) you will be asked a question:

...
### Selected product: "fox" ###
etrax100boot must be run by root.
To make this easier (but less secure) you can make etrax100boot setuid root.
Do you want to make etrax100boot setuid root now [yn]? (default n):

You should answer y to enable a correct develop phase as a normal user and granting rights to the SDK to be able to use the ethernet hardware (that requires root privileges) to flash your Fox Board. You will be asked for your root password. This is only to let etrax100boot, that is the program able to flash your Fox, to run as root.

Now you are ready to roll. Go to the directory devboard-R2_01:

# cd devboard-R2_01

And run the SDK configuration menu:

# make menuconfig

From this menu you can select a lot of things like your FOX Board type, the Kernel version, what drivers and application you want to include on your final fimage.

To generate a new fimage just save and exit and type:

# ./configure
# make

After some minutes you will have your fimage file ready to program on the FOX Board flash memory.

To learn how to transfer a new flash image on the FOX Board flash memory read this article:

• How to reflash a FOX Board