ARM development environment based on Allwinner H3 chip

I recently bought a NanoPi M1 board from FriendlyArm, and applied for a NanoPi NEO board online. Both are Crotex-A7 quad-core ARM development boards based on the Allwinner H3 chip. The two boards can share a development environment. This article takes NanoPi NEO as an example to briefly describe the construction of the ARM development environment based on the Allwinner H3 chip.

1. Install cross-compilation tools

1.1 Obtaining cross-compilation tools

In Baidu Netdisk, the cross-compilation tool for Nanopi NEO is provided:

Notice:

The first gcc-linaro-arm.tar.xz is compiled using the script provided by Friendly Arm to generate the firmware;

If you need a cross-compilation tool to compile applications or kernels, you need to use the second arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf-4.9.3-20160512.tar.xz tool.

1.2 Install cross-compilation tools

Unzip: arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf-4.9.3-20160512.tar.xz, get the 4.9.3 directory, and copy the directory to /usr/local/arm/ in the same way as building a cross-compilation environment for other platforms.

Set the environment variables and add the following to the end of ~/.bashrc:

# vim ~/.bashrc

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/arm/4.9.3/bin/

export PATH

Restart or log out and log in again to use the cross-compilation tool.

1.3 Verify that the installation is successful

Verify that the cross-compilation tool is installed successfully:

$ arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -v

Using built-in specs.

COLLECT_GCC=arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf-gcc

COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/local/arm/4.9.3/bin/../libexec/gcc/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/4.9.3/lto-wrapper

Target: arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf

Configured with: /work/toolchain/build/src/gcc-4.9.3/configure --build=x86_64-build_pc-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-build_pc-linux-gnu --target=arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf --prefix=/opt/FriendlyARM/toolchain/4.9.3 --with-sysroot=/opt/FriendlyARM/toolchain/4.9.3/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/sys-root --enable-languages=c,c++ --with-arch=armv7-a --with-tune=cortex-a9 --with-fpu=vfpv3 --with-float=hard --with-pkgversion=ctng-1.21.0-229g-FA --with-bugurl=http://www.friendlyarm.com/ --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-libmudflap --disable-libgomp --disable-libssp --disable-libquadmath --disable-libquadmath-support --disable-libsanitizer --with-gmp=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --with-mpfr=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --with-mpc=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --with-isl=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --with-cloog=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --with-libelf=/work/toolchain/build/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/buildtools --enable-lto --with-host-libstdcxx='-static-libgcc -Wl,-Bstatic,-lstdc++,-Bdynamic -lm' --enable-threads=posix --enable-linker-build-id --with-linker-hash-style=gnu --enable-plugin --enable-gold --disable-multilib --with-local-prefix=/opt/FriendlyARM/toolchain/4.9.3/arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf/sys-root --enable-long-long

Thread model: posix

gcc version 4.9.3 (ctng-1.21.0-229g-FA)

1.4 Verify that the cross-compilation tool can compile normally

Verify that the program compiled by the installed cross-compilation tool can run on the Nanopi NEO board:

1) First, write a simple verification program, which is the Hello world!

$ cat hello.c

#include

int main(void)

{

    printf("Hello world!n");

    return 0;

}

2) Cross-compile the program into a program that can be run on the board:

$ arm-cortexa9-linux-gnueabihf-gcc hello.c -o hello

3) After the compilation is complete, the generated hello program can be viewed in the following file properties:

$ file hello

hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, for GNU/Linux 3.0.8, BuildID[sha1]=e471478037c7cf740dadac9ec82136aad38f0c4e, not stripped

2. Copy the program to the development board through the NFS file system

2.1 Connect the board to the Internet first

1) Make sure the board is connected to the Internet:

# ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr **:**:**:**:**:**  

          inet addr:***.***.*.*** Bcast:***.***.*.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

          inet6 addr: ****::****:****:****:****/64 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

          RX packets:820 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:637 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:513171 (501.1 KiB) TX bytes:49921 (48.7 KiB)

          Interrupt:114

lo Link encap:Local Loopback 

          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

          RX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:3304 (3.2 KiB) TX bytes:3304 (3.2 KiB)

2) Ping the external network to check whether it can communicate with the external network:

# ping www.baidu.com

PING www.baidu.com (163.177.151.110) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from www.baidu.com (163.177.151.110): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=11.1 ms

64 bytes from www.baidu.com (163.177.151.110): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=10.3 ms

64 bytes from www.baidu.com (163.177.151.110): icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=10.6 ms

^C

--- www.baidu.com ping statistics ---

3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 10.356/10.740/11.183/0.350 ms

2.2 Install NFS server and configure NFS directory

1) Install NFS Server

# sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

2) Create NFS directory:

# vim /etc/exports

Add to:

/mnt *(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)

3) Restart the NFS server:

# systemctl restart nfs-kernel-server

4) Check whether nfs is started:

# ps -aux | grep nfs

root 39 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 14:53 0:00 [nfsiod]

root 29118 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29119 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29120 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29121 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29122 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29123 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29124 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29125 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:55 0:00 [nfsd]

root 29142 0.0 0.1 4136 748 ttyS0 S+ 15:56 0:00 grep nfs

2.3 Transferring files via NFS network server

Mount the file to the board via the NFS network server:

1) Install the NFS client on the PC virtual machine:

$ sudo apt-get install nfs-common

2) Mount the board's /mnt/nfs directory to the PC virtual machine's /mnt directory:

$ sudo mount -t nfs -o intr,nolock 192.168.4.113:/mnt/nfs /mnt

3) Copy the compiled program on the PC virtual machine to the board:

$ sudo cp hello /mnt

You can see the copied program in the /mnt/nfs directory on the board:

# ls /mnt

hello

Run the program on the development board to verify whether the program can run on the board:

# ./hello

Hello world!

The verification is successful, and the program compiled by the cross-compilation tool can run normally on the board.

At this point, the development environment based on the Allwinner H3 chip has been built and development work can be carried out.