Set up network booting for development

You must first set up your PC workstation to use Digi Embedded Yocto. Follow the instructions at Set up your development workstation.

1. Open a serial connection

1. Open a serial connection using any terminal program such as Tera Term, Minicom, Coolterm, or HyperTerminal. This documentation demonstrates using Minicom to work with the device command line.

Use the following settings:

Parameter	Value
Port	Serial port where the device is connected
Baud rate	115200
Data bits	8
Parity	None
Stop bits	1
Flow control	None

2. Reset the device by pressing the reset button on the board. Then immediately press any key in the serial terminal to stop the auto-boot process. The U-Boot bootloader prompt displays:

U-Boot dub-2015.04-r8.3+g0de0373ade (Apr 24 2017 - 02:22:53)

CPU:   Freescale i.MX6UL rev1.1 528 MHz (running at 396 MHz)
CPU:   Industrial temperature grade (-40C to 105C) at 44C
Reset cause: POR
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  256 MiB
MCA:   HW_VER=1  FW_VER=0.12 
PMIC:  PFUZE300 DEV_ID=0x30 REV_ID=0x11
NAND:  256 MiB
MMC:   FSL_SDHC: 0
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
ConnectCore 6UL SOM variant 0x02: Industrial Ultralite 528MHz, 256MB NAND, 256MB DDR3, -40/+85C, Wireleh
Board: ConnectCore 6UL SBC, version 2, ID 135
Net:   FEC0
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 

2. Prepare the device artifacts

The device artifacts to boot from network are either the result of your custom build or the pre-built artifacts provided by Digi.

You can download the pre-compiled images from ftp://ftp1.digi.com/support/digiembeddedyocto/2.2/r3/images/ccimx6ulsbc/.

1. Untar the root filesystem tarball (*.rootfs.tar.bz2) in the NFS exported directory of your development workstation. See 4. Set up a NFS server.

~> sudo tar xvfp image.rootfs.tar.bz2 -C /export/nfsroot

2. Copy the kernel *.bin file to the TFTP exported directory of your development workstation. See 3. Set up a TFTP server.

~> sudo cp image.bin /tftpboot

3. Copy the device tree *.dtb file to the TFTP exported directory of your development workstation. See 3. Set up a TFTP server.

=> printenv board_id
board_id=129
=>

~> sudo cp image.dtb /export/nfsroot/

3. Configure your device's network settings

1. Get a dynamic IP for your target:

=> setenv autoload no
=> dhcp

or you can set a static IP:

=> setenv ipaddr 192.168.115.222

3. Configure the IP of the development workstation with TFTP and NFS servers installed. See Set up your development workstation:

=> setenv serverip 192.168.115.1

4. Boot from network

1. Set the directory with the rootfs to mount. This directory is the one exported via NFS in your development workstation. See 4. Set up a NFS server.

=> setenv rootpath /export/nfsroot

2. Specify the device tree (*.dtb) file name. This is the name of the *.dtb file you copied to the TFTP exported directory of your development workstation.

=> setenv fdt_file image.dtb

3. Establish the kernel file (*.bin) name. This is the name of the *.bin file you copied to the TFTP exported directory of your development workstation.

=> setenv uimage image.bin

4. Save the changes.

=> saveenv

5. Boot from TFTP.

=> dboot linux tftp

Note You can make these changes persistent by writing the following command:

=> setenv bootcmd 'dboot linux tftp'
=> setenv saveenv

The target now loads the kernel and the device tree from the TFTP server and the root filesystem from the NFS server.

Boot from NFS

To avoid using TFTP for kernel and device tree files and boot everything from NFS, copy the kernel *.bin and device tree *.dtb files to the NFS-exported directory of your development workstation (instead of to the TFTP directory). See 4. Set up a NFS server.

Boot from NFS using the command:

=> dboot linux nfs