openSUSE on CuBox (Day 4)

I left off yesterday wondering how difficult it would be to start building openSUSE images for the CuBox. After searching a bit I found that the KIWI tool seems to be the right one for the job - and indeed it is the tool that is used in the openSUSE Build Service to get this kind of job done on a huge scale. So far, so good. I read through the instructions over on http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KIWI_Cookbook_Start_Cooking to see what the basic steps for cooking up a raw image are.

First off, I needed the actual content of the image - i.e. the kernel and root filesystem. Conveniently, the openSUSE ARM contributors have already got one cooked up that they "made earlier". To get in on my development machine (my laptop), all I needed to do was (I already had the osc tool installed):

osc bco openSUSE:12.2:ARM:Contrib:Cubox JeOS-cubox

That left me with the project fully checked out on my local disk. I started fooling around with kiwi, trying to configure, prepare and build an image for CuBox - a complete waste of time. It turns out that the Build Service has this covered already. No need for messing around with local kiwi builds. To get a raw image for CuBox all I had to do was:

osc build images armv7l JeOS-cubox.kiwi

Make sure qemu-linux-user is installed beforehand though - actually, you'd be well advised to follow all the (brief) instructions about getting started with ARM development for openSUSE  over at http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:ARM_distribution_howto in order to get your development machine ready.

I didn't go making changes to the image yet - I just wanted to see how easy or difficult it is to create an image by myself.

In summary, building images for CuBox is child's play - the openSUSE ARM people have already done the grunt work and the Build Service takes all the sweat and cursing out of the actual cooking.

Next, time for some real work - debugging the booting of the CuBox to find out why manual intervention is needed during UBoot, to get the kernel to boot.