Embedded Linux system for Raspberry Pi with Yocto Project

Yocto Project, and OpenEmbedded, have been making news lately as the toolchain to build custom embedded Linux systems. I decided to try and get a working Linux system up and running on a Raspberry Pi.

The procedure that follows uses the meta-raspberrypi BSP in tandem with Yocto Project poky.

Initialize the build by executing the following commands. I use an Ubuntu 14.04 VM with Parallels.

git clone http://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
git clone http://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-raspberrypi
git clone https://github.com/dv1/meta-gstreamer1.0.git
source poky/oe-init-build-env rpi-build

Append meta-raspberrypi and meta-gstreamer1.0 layers to BBLAYERS in conf/bblayers.conf.

For example

BBLAYERS ?= " \
  /home/parallels/yocto/poky/meta \
  /home/parallels/yocto/poky/meta-yocto \
  /home/parallels/yocto/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
  /home/parallels/yocto/meta-gstreamer1.0 \
  /home/parallels/yocto/meta-raspberrypi \
  "

Set MACHINE to raspberrypi in conf/local.conf.

Complete the build by executing

bitbake rpi-hwup-image

That will take a while.

After the build is complete, create an SD card with the following command. Remember to change /dev/sdb to the proper device name.

dd if=tmp/deploy/images/raspberrypi/rpi-hwup-image-raspberrypi.rpi-sdimg of=/dev/sdb

Boot Pi using the SD card. Command line output appears on the HDMI display, or the serial port on the expansion header. Login is root, with an empty password.