[Angstrom-devel] AM1808

[Michael Schnell]

On 07/19/2011 12:16 PM, Koen Kooi wrote:
>
> Over here at angstrom we suggest angstrom :)
>
Yep. As I am new to angstrom. I) wanted to make sure that it's suitable 
for embedded controllers with AM1808 or AM 335x

> Does it really only have 32M or is that artificially limited by uboot setting mem=32M?
The hardware is: 
http://www.logicpd.com/products/system-modules/texas-instruments-omap-l138-som-m1#tabs-som-2

Here they say it's either 64 or 128 MB

but on the command line I get

root at da850-omapl138-evm:~# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:          28120 kB
MemFree:           11636 kB
Buffers:            1052 kB
Cached:             8796 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:             5336 kB
Inactive:           6372 kB
Active(anon):       2016 kB
Inactive(anon):        0 kB
Active(file):       3320 kB
Inactive(file):     6372 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:                16 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:          1888 kB
Mapped:             2200 kB
Shmem:               156 kB
Slab:               2636 kB
SReclaimable:        924 kB
SUnreclaim:         1712 kB
KernelStack:         360 kB
PageTables:          232 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:       14060 kB
Committed_AS:       6644 kB
VmallocTotal:     985088 kB
VmallocUsed:         400 kB
VmallocChunk:     984612 kB



So maybe it in fact memory artificially limited. What to do about this ? 
(I'm new to uboot, too.)
> The board distributor and/or vendor installed angstrom on their own, so I don't know which version is on there and if there were some "improvements" made by the vendor. I'd suggest going to
> http://narcissus.angstrom-distribution.org/
> And building a new image for the 'da850-omapl138-evm' machine (which matches your evm).
I'll try to do this. But I suppose this will not take care of any uboot 
issues. Moreover I suppose I need to persuade uboot to install the new 
Kernel. Right now I don't know how to do this.
>> (Question 2) How to use opkg on this device or upgrading the distribution (including the Kernel)l and installing additional packages (like audio and X)?
> Normally it's a matter of 'opkg update ; opkg install foo',
I did try both and got the said error message:

root at da850-omapl138-evm:~# opkg install ppp
Upgrading ppp on root from 2.4.3-r9.5 to 2.4.3-r9.6...
Downloading 
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/unstable/ipk/glibc/armv5te/base/ppp_2.4.3-r9.6_armv5te.ipk.
Collected errors:
  * gz_open: fork: Cannot allocate memory.
  * opkg_install_pkg: Failed to unpack control files from 
/tmp/opkg-GhmigW/ppp_2.4.3-r9.6_armv5te.ipk.
  * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package ppp.


> you can see which packages are available at:
> http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/
I did check this and found an impressive number :) .
> Note that not all angstrom releases have the same packages available, but we do try.
Obviously :) . That is why I at first tried to upgrade to the current 
version.
>> I found that "lsmod" shows no loaded modules. But as busybox is configured to feature the module specific commands I suppose the distribution does support modules
>> (Question 3) Can this system be enhanced with Kernel modules ? Why are no modules loaded after starting ?
> Yes, and for the second question, I don't know about the "improvements" that were made on top of a standard angstrom.
I see.
>> We want to use I²S audio output. The kit does feature an I²S to analog converter.
>> (Question 4) How to configure, use and test the audio output ?
> No idea on that, sorry. I think that's a question for logicPD.
Not exclusively. Of course a driver for the Chips I²S hardware is 
necessary. But as same is not specific to the PCB, but just to the 
TI-chip, I did hope it's included in one of the standard packages. 
AFAIK, the I²S to analog hardware in the board does not need any 
software support. But on top of the driver, I understand that I need to 
install the ALSA sub-system. And additionally, I need some user program 
that can output a sound just for testing. I hoped that these are 
standard issues that are covered by the distribution.
>> We want to use an LCD display (mainly for development and maintenance). The kit features a socket for the chip's LCD/Video pins. We are going to get an LCD panel to connect to the board or to find a converter that allows connecting some standard monitor.
>> (Question 5) How to configure, use and test the LCD and/or Video output ?
> No idea on that, sorry. I think that's a question for logicPD. I know that the stock LCD is supported by angstrom out of the box.
Sounds good. Again I don't suppose that Logic PD has anything to do with 
this, as the PCB just routes the TI-chip's appropriate pins to a socket.
>> We want to be able to run software that has a  GUI.
>> (Question 6) How to install a system that allows for running GUI software (X11, QT or GTK or ???, ...)
> See my answers to question 1 and 2 :)
So you suggest that X11 and (e.g.) GTK and whatever necessary are just 
packages that can be installed ?

Great !
>> We want to be able to run the system without a monitor connected.
>> (Question 7) How to install and use VNC (or whatever) to remote-control the GUI of a running program ?
> For X11 you can install x11vnc and qt has a vnc plugin you can use, configuring those is a bit out of scope for angstrom, but let us know if you run into any troubles.

I'll do some research on what x11vnc can do for me (I suppose this is an 
X11 server including a framebuffer integrate in vnc without needing 
video hardware ?) and what the qt vnc plugin is.

I'll try that ASA I am able to get opkg running. (which leaves me with 
the question about the hardware driver to use for the Chips video output).

Thanks a lot !
-Michael