Copyright (C) 2016-2019, ilbers GmbH
Isar is a set of scripts for building software packages and repeatable generation of Debian-based root filesystems with customizations.
Isar provides:
Debian
, Raspbian
, etc. and proprietary ones created manually.chroot
environment using the same toolchain and libraries that will be installed to the target filesystem.For demonstration purposes, Isar provides support for the following configurations:
The steps below describe how to build the images provided by default.
The supported host system is >= stretch.
Install the following packages:
binfmt-support
debootstrap
dosfstools
dpkg-dev
gettext-base
git
mtools
parted
python3
python3-distutils # host >= buster
qemu # start_vm
qemu-user-static
reprepro
sudo
Notes:
alternatives
setting.sudo apt-get install
binfmt-support qemu-user-static
on the host that should run the container.binfmt-support
after qemu-user-static
, perform sudo
apt-get install --reinstall qemu-user-static
to register binary formats
handled by QEMU (check e.g. qemu-arm
in /usr/sbin/update-binfmts
--display
).Isar requires sudo
rights without password to work with chroot
and debootstrap
. To add them, use the following steps:
# visudo
In the editor, allow the current user to run sudo without a password, e.g.:
<user> ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
Defaults env_keep += "ftp_proxy http_proxy https_proxy no_proxy"
Replace <user>
with your user name. Use the tab character between the user name and parameters.
The second line will make sure your proxy settings will not get lost when using sudo
. Include it if you are in the unfortunate possition to having to deal with that.
Clone the isar repository:
$ git clone http://github.com/ilbers/isar.git
To initialize the isar
build directory run the following commands:
$ cd isar
$ . isar-init-build-env ../build
../build
is the build directory. You may use a different name here.
To build target images ("targets" in BitBake terms) for one configuration,
define the default configuration in conf/local.conf
in the build directory,
e.g.:
MACHINE ??= "qemuarm"
DISTRO ??= "debian-stretch"
DISTRO_ARCH ??= "armhf"
Then, call bitbake
with image names, e.g.:
bitbake multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-debug
The following images are created:
tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/isar-image-base-qemuarm-debian-stretch.ext4.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/isar-image-debug-qemuarm-debian-stretch.ext4.img
Alternatively, BitBake supports building images for multiple configurations in
a single call. List all configurations in conf/local.conf
:
BBMULTICONFIG = " \
qemuarm-stretch \
qemuarm-buster \
qemuarm64-stretch \
qemuarm64-buster \
qemui386-stretch \
qemui386-buster \
qemuamd64-stretch \
qemuamd64-buster \
rpi-stretch \
"
The following command will produce isar-image-base
images for all targets:
$ bitbake \
multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemuarm-buster:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemuarm64-stretch:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemui386-stretch:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemui386-buster:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemuamd64-stretch:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:qemuamd64-buster:isar-image-base \
multiconfig:rpi-stretch:isar-image-base
Created images are:
tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemuarm.ext4.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/isar-image-base-debian-buster-qemuarm.ext4.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm64/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemuarm64.ext4.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemui386/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemui386.wic.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemui386/isar-image-base-debian-buster-qemui386.wic.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemuamd64/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemuamd64.wic.img
tmp/deploy/images/qemuamd64/isar-image-base-debian-buster-qemuamd64.wic.img
tmp/deploy/images/rpi/isar-image-base.rpi-sdimg
A bootable disk image is generated if you set IMAGE_TYPE to 'wic-img'. Behind the scenes a tool called wic
is used to assemble the images. It is controlled by a .wks
file which you can choose with changing WKS_FILE. Some examples in the tree use that feature already.
# Generate an image for the `i386` target architecture
$ bitbake multiconfig:qemui386-stretch:isar-image-base
# Similarly, for the `amd64` target architecture, in this case EFI
$ bitbake multiconfig:qemuamd64-stretch:isar-image-base
Variables may be used in .wks.in
files; Isar will expand them and generate a regular .wks
file before generating the disk image using wic
.
In order to run the EFI images with qemu
, an EFI firmware is required and available at the following address:
https://github.com/tianocore/edk2/tree/3858b4a1ff09d3243fea8d07bd135478237cb8f7
Note that the ovmf
package in Debian stretch/buster contains a pre-compiled firmware, but doesn't seem to be recent
enough to allow images to be testable under qemu
.
# AMD64 image, EFI
qemu-system-x86_64 -m 256M -nographic -bios edk2/Build/OvmfX64/RELEASE_*/FV/OVMF.fd -hda tmp/deploy/images/qemuamd64/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemuamd64.wic.img
# i386 image
qemu-system-i386 -m 256M -nographic -hda tmp/deploy/images/qemui386/isar-image-base-debian-stretch-qemui386.wic.img
chroot
(8) runs a command within a specified root directory. Please refer to GNU coreutils online help: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ for more information.
QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. Please refer to http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page for more information.
Debian is a free operating system for your machine. Please refer to https://www.debian.org/index.en.html for more information.
Apt
(for Advanced Package Tool) is a set of tools for managing Debian package repositories and applications installed on your Debian system. Please refer to https://wiki.debian.org/Apt for more information.
BitBake is a generic task execution engine for efficient execution of shell and Python tasks according to their dependencies. Please refer to https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.6/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual.html for more information.
Isar workflow consists of stages described below.
This filesystem is used as a build environment to compile custom packages. It is generated using apt
binaries repository, selected by the user in configuration file. Please refer to distro configuration chapter for more information.
During this stage Isar processes custom packages selected by the user and generates binary *.deb
packages for the target. Please refer to custom packages generation section for more information.
This filesystem is generated similarly to the buildchroot
one using the apt
binaries repository. Please refer to distro configuration chapter for more information.
At this stage, Isar populates target filesystem by custom packages that were built in previous stages.
Isar can generate various image types, e.g. an ext4 filesystem or a complete SD card image. The list of images to produce is set in configuration file, please refer to image type selection section.
Isar uses the following configuration files:
conf/bblayers.conf
conf/local.conf
This file contains the list of meta layers, where bitbake
will search for recipes, classes and configuration files. By default, Isar includes the following layers:
meta
- Core Isar layer which contains basic functionality.meta-isar
- Product template layer. It demonstrates Isar's features. Also this layer can be used to create your projects.local.conf
This file contains variables that will be exported to the BitBake environment and may be referenced in recipes.
Among other things, local.conf
defines the configurations to generate the
images for.
If BitBake is called with image targets (e.g., isar-image-base
), the
following variables define the default configuration to build for:
MACHINE
- The board to build for (e.g., qemuarm
, rpi
). BitBake looks
for conf/multiconfig/${MACHINE}.conf in every layer.
DISTRO
- The distro to use (e.g. raspbian-stretch
, debian-stretch
).
BitBake looks for conf/distro/${DISTRO}.conf in every layer.
DISTRO_ARCH
- The Debian architecture to build for (e.g., armhf
).
If BitBake is called with multiconfig targets (e.g.,
multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base
), the following variable defines
all supported configurations:
BBMULTICONFIG
- The list of the complete configuration definition files.
BitBake looks for conf/multiconfig/.conf in every layer. Every
configuration must define MACHINE
, DISTRO
and DISTRO_ARCH
.
Some other variables include:
IMAGE_INSTALL
- The list of custom packages to build and install to target image, please refer to relative chapter for more information.BB_NUMBER_THREADS
- The number of bitbake
jobs that can be run in parallel. Please set this option according your host CPU cores number.LOCALE_GEN
- A \n
seperated list of /etc/locale.gen
entries desired on the target.LOCALE_DEFAULT
- The default locale used for the LANG
and LANGUAGE
variable in /etc/locale
.HOST_DISTRO
- The distro to use for SDK root filesystem (so far limited only to debian-stretch
). This variable is optional.HOST_ARCH
- The Debian architecture of SDK root filesystem (e.g., amd64
). By default set to current Debian host architecture. This variable is optional.HOST_DISTRO_APT_SOURCES
- List of apt source files for SDK root filesystem. This variable is optional.HOST_DISTRO_APT_PREFERENCES
- List of apt preference files for SDK root filesystem. This variable is optional.DISTRO_APT_PREMIRRORS
- The preferred mirror (append it to the default URI in the format ftp.debian.org my.preferred.mirror
. This variable is optional.CFG_ROOT_PW
- The encrypted root password to be set. To encrypt password use mkpasswd
. You find mkpasswd
in the whois
package of Debian. If the variable is empty, root login is passwordless.CFG_ROOT_LOCKED
- If set to 1
the root account will be locked.In Isar, each machine can use its specific Linux distro to generate buildchroot
and target filesystem. By default, Isar provides configuration files for the following distros:
User can select appropriate distro for specific machine by setting the following variable in machine configuration file:
DISTRO = "distro-name"
To add new package to an image, do the following:
isar
layer.IMAGE_INSTALL
variable by this recipe name. If this package should be included for all the machines, put IMAGE_INSTALL
to local.conf
file. If you want to include this package for specific machine, put it to your machine configuration file.Please refer to Add a Custom Application
section for more information about writing recipes.
Isar can generate various images types for specific machine. The type of the image to be generated may be specified through the IMAGE_TYPE
variable. Currently, the following image types are provided:
ext4
- Raw ext4 filesystem image (default option for qemuarm
machine).rpi-sdimg
- A complete, partitioned Raspberry Pi SD card image (default option for the rpi
machine).wic-img
- A full disk image with user-specified partitions created and populated using the wic tool.ubi-img
- A image for use on mtd nand partitions employing UBIThe distro is defined by the set of the following variables:
DISTRO_APT_SOURCES
- List of apt source filesDISTRO_APT_KEYS
- List of gpg key URIs used to verify apt reposDISTRO_APT_PREFERENCES
- List of apt preference filesDISTRO_KERNELS
- List of supported kernel suffixesBelow is an example for Raspbian Stretch:
DISTRO_APT_SOURCES += "conf/distro/raspbian-stretch.list"
DISTRO_APT_KEYS += "https://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian.public.key;sha256sum=ca59cd4f2bcbc3a1d41ba6815a02a8dc5c175467a59bd87edeac458f4a5345de"
DISTRO_CONFIG_SCRIPT?= "raspbian-configscript.sh"
DISTRO_KERNELS ?= "rpi rpi2 rpi-rpfv rpi2-rpfv"
To add new distro, user should perform the following steps:
Create distro
folder in your layer:
$ mkdir meta-user/conf/distro
Create the .conf
file in distro folder with the name of your distribution. We recommend to name distribution in the following format: name
-suite
, for example:
debian-stretch
debian-buster
In this file, define the variables described above.
Every machine is described in its configuration file. The file defines the following variables:
IMAGE_PREINSTALL
- The list of machine-specific packages, that has to be included to image. This variable must include the name of the following packages (if applicable):
KERNEL_IMAGE
- The name of kernel binary that it installed to /boot
folder in target filesystem. This variable is used by Isar to extract the kernel binary and put it into the deploy folder. This makes sense for embedded devices, where kernel and root filesystem are written to different flash partitions. This variable is optional.INITRD_IMAGE
- The name of ramdisk
binary. The meaning of this variable is similar to KERNEL_IMAGE
. This variable is optional.MACHINE_SERIAL
- The name of serial device that will be used for console output.IMAGE_TYPE
- The type of images to be generated for this machine.Below is an example of machine configuration file for Raspberry Pi
board:
IMAGE_PREINSTALL = "linux-image-rpi-rpfv \
raspberrypi-bootloader-nokernel"
KERNEL_IMAGE = "vmlinuz-4.4.0-1-rpi"
INITRD_IMAGE = "initrd.img-4.4.0-1-rpi"
MACHINE_SERIAL = "ttyAMA0"
IMAGE_TYPE = "rpi-sdimg"
To add new machine user should perform the following steps:
Create the machine
directory in your layer:
$ mkdir meta-user/conf/machine
Create .conf
file in machine folder with the name of your machine.
Define in this file variables, that described above in this chapter.
Image in Isar contains the following artifacts:
In image recipe, the following variable defines the list of packages that will be included to target image: IMAGE_PREINSTALL
. These packages will be taken from apt
source.
The user may use met-isar/recipes-core-images
as a template for new image recipes creation.
The image recipe in Isar creates a folder with target root filesystem. Its default location is:
tmp/work/${DISTRO}-${DISTRO_ARCH}/${MACHINE}/${IMAGE}/rootfs
Every image type in Isar is implemented as a bitbake
class. The goal of these classes is to pack root filesystem folder to appropriate format.
As already mentioned, Isar uses bitbake
to accomplish the work. The whole build process is a sequence of tasks. This sequence is generated using task dependencies, so the next task in chain requires completion of previous ones.
The last task of image recipe is do_populate
, so the class that implement new image type should continue execution from this point. According to the BitBake syntax, this can be implemented as follows:
Create a new class:
$ vim meta-user/classes/my-image.bbclass
Add these lines:
do_my_image() {
}
addtask my_image before do_build after do_populate
The content of do_my_image
function can be implemented either in shell or in Python.
In the machine configuration file, set the following:
IMAGE_TYPE = "my-image"
Isar contains additional image type classes that can be used as reference:
ext4-img
rpi-sdimg
targz-img
ubifs-img
ubi-img
wic-img
Customization and configuration of an image should be done via packages, see below.
Adding those configuration packages to the image can be done in two ways:
IMAGE_INSTALL
, like any other isar created package, orIMAGE_TRANSIENT_PACKAGES
.In most cases adding the configuration package to IMAGE_INSTALL
is the right option.
In cases were the configuration script of the package has some external dependencies, that should not be part of the final image, then IMAGE_TRANSIENT_PACKAGES
is the right option.
Packages in the IMAGE_TRANSIENT_PACKAGES
variable are installed to the image and purged in the next step. If such a configuration package deploys file as part of their content, then those files will be removed as well.
A custom image recipe may be created to assemble packages of your choice into a root file-system image. The isar-image
class
implements a do_rootfs
function to compile and configure the file-system for you. Prebuilt packages may be selected for
installation by appending them to the IMAGE_PREINSTALL
variable while packages created by ISAR should be appended to
IMAGE_INSTALL
. A sample image recipe follows.
DESCRIPTION = "Sample image recipe for ISAR"
LICENSE = "gpl-2.0"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${LAYERDIR_core}/licenses/COPYING.GPLv2;md5=751419260aa954499f7abaabaa882bbe"
PV = "1.0"
IMAGE_PREINSTALL = " \
openssh-server \
"
inherit isar-image
The distribution selected via the DISTRO
variable may need to run a post-configuration script after the root file-system
was assembled. Isar provides scripts for Debian and Raspbian. In the event where a different Debian-based distribution is
used, your custom image recipe may need to set DISTRO_CONFIG_SCRIPT
and use SRC_URI
and FILESPATH
for the script to
be copied into the work directory (WORKDIR
).
Before creating a new recipe it's highly recommended to take a look into the BitBake user manual mentioned in Terms and Definitions section.
Isar currently supports two ways of creating custom packages.
The deb
packages are built using dpkg-buildpackage
, so the sources should contain the debian
directory with necessary meta information. This way is the default way of adding software that needs to be compiled from source. The bbclass for this approach is called dpkg
.
NOTE: If the sources do not contain a debian
directory your recipe can fetch, create, or ship that.
This is also what you do if you want to rebuild/modify an upstream package.
Isar does understand SRC_URI
entries starting with "apt://". For an example
of a customized upstream package have a look at meta-isar/recipes-app/hello
.
DESCRIPTION = "Sample application for ISAR"
LICENSE = "gpl-2.0"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${LAYERDIR_core}/licenses/COPYING.GPLv2;md5=751419260aa954499f7abaabaa882bbe"
PV = "0.3-a18c14c"
SRC_URI = "git://github.com/ilbers/hello.git"
SRCREV = "a18c14cc11ce6b003f3469e89223cffb4016861d"
S = "${WORKDIR}/git"
inherit dpkg
The following variables are used in this recipe:
DESCRIPTION
- Textual description of the package.LICENSE
- Application license file.LIC_FILES_CHKSUM
- Reference to the license file with its checksum. Isar recommends to store license files for your applications into layer your layer folder meta-user/licenses/
. Then you may reference it in recipe using the following path:
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = file://${LAYERDIR_core}/licenses/...
This approach prevents duplication of the license files in different packages.
PV
- Package version.SRC_URI
- The link where to fetch application source. Please check the BitBake user manual for supported download formats.S
- The directory name where application sources will be unpacked. For git
repositories, it should be set to git
. Please check the BitBake user manual for supported download formats.SRCREV
- Source code revision to fetch. Please check the BitBake user manual for supported download formats.The last line in the example above adds recipe to the Isar work chain.
If your customization is not about compiling from source there is a second way of creating deb
packages. That way can be used for cases like:
The bbclass for this approach is called dpkg-raw
.
DESCRIPTION = "Sample application for ISAR"
MAINTAINER = "Your name here <you@domain.com>"
DEBIAN_DEPENDS = "apt"
inherit dpkg-raw
do_install() {
....
}
For the variables please have a look at the previous example, the following new variables are required by dpkg-raw
class:
MAINTAINER
- The maintainer of the deb
package we create. If the maintainer is undefined, the recipe author should be mentioned hereDEBIAN_DEPENDS
- Debian packages that the package depends onHave a look at the example-raw
recipe to get an idea how the dpkg-raw
class can be used to customize your image.
Note that the package will be build using the whole debian package workflow, so your package will be checked by many debhelper scripts. If those helpers point out quality issues it might be a good idea to fix them. But example-raw
also shows how rules can still be violated.
binfmt is a powerful feature that makes possible to run foreign architectures like ARM on x86 hosts. But at the same the performance of such emulation is quite low. For the cases when lots of packages should be built from sources, a cross-compilation support could be very useful.
Cross-compilation mode could be enabled by using the ISAR_CROSS_COMPILE
variable. This variable could be set in both:
local.conf
to set cross-compilation mode to be the default option for the whole build.ISAR_CROSS_COMPILE := "0"
.The cross-building process is absolutely the same as for native compilation, no extra tasks are added and removed: newly built packages are put into Isar apt.
Debian cross-compilation works out of the box starting from Debian stretch distribution. Currently the following build configurations are supported in Isar:
Building applications for targets in ISAR takes a lot of time as they are built under QEMU. SDK providing crossbuild environment will help to solve this problem.
Create SDK root file system for host with installed cross-toolchain for target architecture and ability to install already prebuilt target binary artifacts. Developer chroots to sdk rootfs and develops applications for target platform.
User manually triggers creation of SDK root filesystem for his target platform by launching the task do_populate_sdk
for target image, f.e.
bitbake -c do_populate_sdk multiconfig:${MACHINE}-${DISTRO}:isar-image-base
.
The resulting SDK rootfs is archived into tmp/deploy/images/${MACHINE}/sdk-${DISTRO}-${DISTRO_ARCH}.tar.xz
.
It is additionally available for direct use under tmp/deploy/images/${MACHINE}/sdk-${DISTRO}-${DISTRO_ARCH}/
.
The SDK rootfs directory /isar-apt
contains a copy of isar-apt repo with locally prebuilt target debian packages (for ).
One may chroot into the SDK and install required target packages with the help of apt-get install <package_name>:<DISTRO_ARCH>
command.
Trigger creation of SDK root filesystem
bitbake -c do_populate_sdk multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base
Mount the following directories in chroot by passing resulting rootfs as an argument to the script mount_chroot.sh
:
cat scripts/mount_chroot.sh
#!/bin/sh
set -e
mount /tmp $1/tmp -o bind
mount proc $1/proc -t proc -o nosuid,noexec,nodev
mount sysfs $1/sys -t sysfs -o nosuid,noexec,nodev
mount devtmpfs $1/dev -t devtmpfs -o mode=0755,nosuid
mount devpts $1/dev/pts -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620
mount tmpfs $1/dev/shm -t tmpfs -o rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev
$ sudo scripts/mount_chroot.sh ../build/tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/sdk-debian-stretch-armhf
chroot to isar SDK rootfs:
$ sudo chroot build/tmp/deploy/images/qemuarm/sdk-debian-stretch-armhf
Check that cross toolchains are installed
:~# dpkg -l | grep crossbuild-essential-armhf
ii crossbuild-essential-armhf 12.3 all Informational list of cross-build-essential packages
Install needed prebuilt target packages.
:~# apt-get update
:~# apt-get install libhello-dev:armhf
Check the contents of the installed target package
:~# dpkg -L libhello-dev
/.
/usr
/usr/include
/usr/include/hello.h
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf
/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libhello.a
/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libhello.la
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libhello-dev
/usr/share/doc/libhello-dev/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhello-dev/copyright
~#
Cache upstream debian packages to reduce time for further downloads and to be able to work offline.
By default, the local caching repo is not gpg signed. If you want to share it in a trusted way, you may sign it.
To do that, install gpg
in your build environment, import the public and private keys,
and provide the path to the public key in conf/local.conf
, e.g.:
BASE_REPO_KEY = "file://<absolute_path_to_your_pub_key_file>"'
Trigger creation of local apt caching Debian packages during image generation.
bitbake -c cache_base_repo multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base
Set ISAR_USE_CACHED_BASE_REPO
in conf/local.conf
:
# Uncomment this to enable use of cached base repository
#ISAR_USE_CACHED_BASE_REPO ?= "1"
Remove build artifacts to use only local base-apt:
sudo rm -rf tmp
Trigger again generation of image (now using local caching repo):
bitbake multiconfig:qemuarm-stretch:isar-image-base
Files fetched with the SRC_URI
protocol "apt://" are not yet cached.