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Building Zarhus OS

This guide will demonstrate how to build a Zarhus OS image from zero!

Prerequisites

  • Linux PC (tested on Fedora 40)
  • docker installed

  • kas-container 3.0.2 script downloaded and available in PATH.

    mkdir ~/.local/bin
wget -O ~/.local/bin/kas-container https://raw.githubusercontent.com/siemens/kas/3.0.2/kas-container
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/kas-container

Note

You may need to add ~/.local/bin into your PATH. You can do so for example by adding export PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin to your .bashrc and source it.

  • meta-zarhus repository cloned:

    mkdir yocto
cd yocto
git clone https://github.com/zarhus/meta-zarhus.git

  • bmaptool installed:

    sudo dnf install bmap-tools

Note

You can also use bmaptool from GitHub if it is not available in your distro.

Build

Depending on which features you want to have in your build, pass the desired .yml files via command line. You can read more on that in kas documentation. The files should be passed in a specific order. The file which is passed after some file will override settings set by the previously-passed file.

Currently, the following files are present in meta-zarhus/kas:

  • common.yml: common configuration file, should be included in all builds;
  • cache.yml: file for cache mirrors configuration;
  • debug.yml: adds debug functionalities into the final image;
  • rockchip.yml: Rockchip-specific target configuration file, should be used for Rockchip builds;
  • webkit.yml: includes Webkit and some additional functionalities into build.

Then check BSP layers for available target platform (target platforms configs are located in conf/machine directory of every BSP layer) and choose one. Then, from yocto directory run:

SHELL=/bin/bash KAS_MACHINE=<TARGET_NAME> kas-container build <KAS_FILES>

Note

Replace <TARGET_NAME> with the name of the chosen target configuration file, and <KAS_FILES> with a list of kas files, separated by :.

For example:

SHELL=/bin/bash KAS_MACHINE=orangepi-cm4 kas-container build meta-zarhus/kas/common.yml:meta-zarhus/kas/rockchip.yml
  • Image build takes time, so be patient and after build's finish you should see something similar to (the exact tasks numbers may differ):
Initialising tasks: 100% |###########################################################################################| Time: 0:00:01
Sstate summary: Wanted 2 Found 0 Missed 2 Current 931 (0% match, 99% complete)
NOTE: Executing Tasks
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 2532 tasks of which 2524 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.

Verification

The build should finish without errors or warnings.

After the build has finished - feel free to explore yocto/build/tmp/deploy/images/MACHINE_NAME/ directory for built images.

Note

Replace MACHINE_NAME with the name of the machine you have built your image for.

You should find an image with filename ending with .rootfs.wic.gz and a binary map for the image in format with filename ending with .rootfs.wic.bmap. These files will be needed for flashing process.