Edit

Draft version of documentation under development may change! Click here for the latest released version.

AGL Kickstart on Renesas R-Car Starter Kit Gen3 V2.16 (h3ulcb, m3ulcb)

Here is a non exhaustive list of hardware parts that could be used to setup the R-Car Starter Kit Gen3 board development environment:

Starter Kit Gen3 board with its power supply
micro USB-A cable for serial console
USB 2.0 Hub
Ethernet cable
HDMI type D (Micro connector) cable and associated display
micro-SD Card (at least 4GB)
USB touch screen device like the GeChic 1502i (optional)

For more information and latest news, please check :

The following documents may also be helpful:

Yocto-Gen3 on elinux

Building the AGL Demo Platform for R-Car Starter Kit Gen3

Before setting up the build environment, you need to download the proprietary drivers.

Download Renesas graphics drivers with a “click through” license from Renesas website
- If you are building AGL Daring Dab or older release download Renesas graphics drivers with a “click through” license from here.
- Under the Target hardware: R-Car H3/M3 section.

Note:

You have to register with a free account on MyRenesas and accept the license conditions before downloading them the drivers.
The operation is fast and simple but nevertheless mandatory to access evaluation of non open-source drivers for free.
Once you registered, you can download two zip files.
The files must be stored into your download directory (usually $HOME/Downloads, pointed by $XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR).

Here after is an example of the typical files downloaded at the time of writing:

test -f ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/user-dirs.dirs && source ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/user-dirs.dirs
chmod a+r $XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR/*.zip
ls -1 $XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR
-rw-r--r--. 1 1664 agl-sdk 4.5M Dec  8 15:23 R-Car_Gen3_Series_Evaluation_Software_Package_for_Linux-weston2-20170904.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 1664 agl-sdk 3,0M Dec  8 15:24 R-Car_Gen3_Series_Evaluation_Software_Package_of_Linux_Drivers-weston2-20170904.zip

Setting up the build environment

Define the type of R-Car Starter Kit board as a variable:

for machine h3ulcb (Starter Kit Premier/H3) :

bash export MACHINE=h3ulcb
for machine m3ulcb (Starter Kit Pro/M3):

bash export MACHINE=m3ulcb

Now, init your build environment:

cd $AGL_TOP
source meta-agl/scripts/aglsetup.sh -m $MACHINE -b build agl-devel agl-demo agl-netboot agl-appfw-smack agl-localdev

IMPORTANT NOTE: Read the log to be sure you had no error during your setup. In case of missing graphics drivers, you could notice an error message as follow:

[snip]
--- fragment /home/working/workspace_agl_master/meta-agl/templates/machine/h3ulcb/50_setup.sh
/home/working/workspace_agl_master /home/working/workspace_agl_master/build_gen3
The graphics and multimedia acceleration packages for 
the R-Car Gen3 board can be downloaded from:
 https://www.renesas.com/en-us/solutions/automotive/rcar-demoboard-2.html

These 2 files from there should be store in your'/home/devel/Téléchargements' directory.
  R-Car_Gen3_Series_Evaluation_Software_Package_for_Linux-weston2-20170904.zip
  R-Car_Gen3_Series_Evaluation_Software_Package_of_Linux_Drivers-weston2-20170904.zip
/home/working/workspace_agl_master/build_gen3
--- fragment /home/working/workspace_agl_master/meta-agl/templates/base/99_setup_EULAconf.sh
--- end of setup script
OK
Generating setup file: /home/working/workspace_agl_master/build_gen3/agl-init-build-env ... OK
------------ aglsetup.sh: Done
[snip]

If you encounter this issue, or any other unwanted behavior, you can fix the error mentioned and then clean up by removing the “$AGL_TOP/build” directory then re-launch the procedure again.

After this command, the working directory is changed to $AGL_TOP/build.

Users may want to check that the board is correctly selected in the environment:

grep -w -e "^MACHINE =" $AGL_TOP/build/conf/local.conf
  MACHINE = "h3ulcb"
or
  MACHINE = "m3ulcb"

Configure for Release or Development:

development images contain extra tools for developer convenience, in particular:
- a debugger (gdb)
- some tweaks, including a disabled root password
- a SFTP server
- the TCF Agent for easier application deployment and remote debugging
- some extra system tools (usb, bluetooth …)
- …

We explicitely activate these debug facilities by specifying the “agl-devel agl-netboot” feature.

Build your image

The process to build an image is simple:

bitbake agl-demo-platform

When finished (it may take few hours), you should get the final result:

ls -l $AGL_TOP/build/tmp/deploy/images/$MACHINE

Note: In case of failure of the build it is safe to first check that the Linux distribution chosen for your host has been validated for version 2.2 of Yocto.

Booting AGL Image on R-Car Starter Kit Gen3 boards using a microSD card

To boot the board using a micro-SD card, there are two operations that should be done prior to first initial boot:

Create a SD-card with one ext4 partition,
Set up the board to boot on the SD-card.

Then, for each build, the SD-card is merely rewritten and used to boot the configured board.

Prepare the SD-card on the host

Plug the microSD card and get its associated device by either running dmesg | tail -15 or lsblk, for example:

dmesg | tail -15

  [ 1971.462160] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
  [ 1971.462277] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
  [ 1971.462278] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
  [ 1971.463870]  sdc: sdc1 sdc2

Here, the SD-card is attached to the device /dev/sdc.

lsblk

  NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
  sda      8:0    0 167,7G  0 disk
  ├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
  ├─sda2   8:2    0 159,3G  0 part /
  └─sda3   8:3    0   7,9G  0 part [SWAP]
  sdb      8:16   0 931,5G  0 disk
  └─sdb1   8:17   0 931,5G  0 part /media/storage
  sdc      8:32   1  14,9G  0 disk
  ├─sdc1   8:33   1    40M  0 part
  └─sdc2   8:34   1   788M  0 part

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a critical operation, each computer is different and removable devices can change from time to time: so you should repeat this operation each time you insert the microSD card to confirm the device name.

In the example above, we see:

the first SATA drive as ‘sda’.
‘sdc’ corresponds to the microSD card, and is also marked as removable device by lsblk which is a good confirmation.

Partition and format the SD-card

Create an EXT4 partition on the SD-card using fdisk and set the MBR.
For example, if the microSD card is /dev/sdc:

sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

  Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.27.1).
  Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
  Be careful before using the write command.


  Command (m for help): o
  Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x96e5850d.

  Command (m for help): n
  Partition type
     p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
     e   extended (container for logical partitions)
  Select (default p):

  Using default response p.
  Partition number (1-4, default 1):
  First sector (2048-31291391, default 2048):
  Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-31291391, default 31291391):

  Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 14,9 GiB.

  Command (m for help): w
  The partition table has been altered.
  Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
  Syncing disks.

Initialize the ext4 partition using “mke2fs”; for example, if the microSD card is associated with sdc:

sudo mke2fs -t ext4 -O ^64bit /dev/sdc1

  mke2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
  Creating filesystem with 3911168 4k blocks and 979200 inodes
  Filesystem UUID: 690804b9-6c7d-4bbb-b1c1-e9357efabc52
  Superblock backups stored on blocks:
      32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208

  Allocating group tables: done
  Writing inode tables: done
  Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
  Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

CAUTION: Gen3 boards don’t understand 64bits blocks used when filesystem is formated with 64bits feature so make sure you don’t use it.

Copying the built image to the SD-card

Insert the SD-card into your build host:

Your desktop system probably offers a choice to mount the SD-card automatically in some directory.
In the next sample code, we’ll suppose that the SD-card mount directory is stored in the variable $SDCARD.
For example, if the microSD card is associated with device sdc:

export SDCARD=/tmp/agl
mkdir -p $SDCARD
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 $SDCARD

Go to your build directory:

cd $AGL_TOP/build/tmp/deploy/images/$MACHINE

Make sure the filesystem is empty:

sudo rm -rf ${SDCARD:-bad_dir}/*

IMPORTANT NOTE: Verify that tar version is 1.28 or newer: this is required to create extended attributes correctly on the SD-card, and in particular SMACK labels used to enforce security. Check with the following command:

tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.28
[snip]

If your distribution is up to date on this dependency, you can use the host tool directly.
Let’s define a variable for the following steps:

TAR=$(which tar)

Otherwise, a native up-to-date version of tar is also generated while building AGL distribution:

TAR=$AGL_TOP/build/tmp/sysroots/x86_64-linux/usr/bin/tar-native/tar
$TAR --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.28
[snip]

Copy Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) files onto the mircoSD card by extracting the root file system archive:

sudo $TAR --extract --xz --numeric-owner --preserve-permissions --preserve-order --totals \
           --xattrs-include='*' --directory=$SDCARD --file=agl-demo-platform-h3ulcb.tar.xz

Copy Kernel Image and Device Tree Blob file into the boot directory:

For machine h3ulcb (BSP >= 2.19):

sudo cp Image-r8a7795-es1-h3ulcb.dtb $SDCARD/boot/

For machine h3ulcb (BSP < 2.19):

sudo cp Image-r8a7795-h3ulcb.dtb $SDCARD/boot/

For machine m3ulcb:

sudo cp Image-r8a7796-m3ulcb.dtb $SDCARD/boot/

Ensure the changes have been written to the disk:

sync

Unmount the microSD card:

sudo umount $SDCARD

Booting the board

Turn the board off using the power switch.
Insert the microSD-card.
Verify that you have plugged in, at least, the following:
- External monitor on HDMI port
- Input device (keyboard, mouse, touchscreen…) on USB port.
Turn the board on using the power switch.
After a few seconds, you’ll see the AGL splash screen on the display and you’ll be able to log in on the console terminal or in the graphic screen.

Serial Console Setup

Install a serial client on your computer

This can be “screen”, “picocom”, “minicom”.
The lighter of the 3 is “picocom” (it has less dependencies).

Plug a USB cable from your computer to the serial CP2102 USB port (micro USB-A)

With “dmesg” you can check the device created for the serial link. Usually, it’s /dev/ttyUSB0 but the number may vary depending on other USB serial ports connected to the host. To get it, you must switch the board on. For example:

dmesg | tail
[2097783.287091] usb 2-1.5.3: new full-speed USB device number 24 using ehci-pci
[2097783.385857] usb 2-1.5.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001
[2097783.385862] usb 2-1.5.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[2097783.385864] usb 2-1.5.3: Product: FT232R USB UART
[2097783.385866] usb 2-1.5.3: Manufacturer: FTDI
[2097783.385867] usb 2-1.5.3: SerialNumber: AK04WWCE
[2097783.388288] ftdi_sio 2-1.5.3:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[2097783.388330] usb 2-1.5.3: Detected FT232RL
[2097783.388658] usb 2-1.5.3: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

The link is attached to the device /dev/ttyUSB0.
It is time to launch your serial client.
Example:

picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0

minicom -b 115200 -D /dev/ttyUSB0

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

Power on the board to see a shell on the console

For machine h3ulcb:

NOTICE:  BL2: R-Car Gen3 Initial Program Loader(CA57) Rev.1.0.7
NOTICE:  BL2: PRR is R-Car H3 ES1.1
NOTICE:  BL2: LCM state is CM
NOTICE:  BL2: DDR1600(rev.0.15)
NOTICE:  BL2: DRAM Split is 4ch
NOTICE:  BL2: QoS is Gfx Oriented(rev.0.30)
NOTICE:  BL2: AVS setting succeeded. DVFS_SetVID=0x52
NOTICE:  BL2: Lossy Decomp areas
NOTICE:       Entry 0: DCMPAREACRAx:0x80000540 DCMPAREACRBx:0x570
NOTICE:       Entry 1: DCMPAREACRAx:0x40000000 DCMPAREACRBx:0x0
NOTICE:       Entry 2: DCMPAREACRAx:0x20000000 DCMPAREACRBx:0x0
NOTICE:  BL2: v1.1(release):41099f4
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 19:20:52, Jun  9 2016
NOTICE:  BL2: Normal boot
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0xe63150c8 src=0x8180000 len=36(0x24)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x43f00000 src=0x8180400 len=3072(0xc00)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x44000000 src=0x81c0000 len=65536(0x10000)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x44100000 src=0x8200000 len=524288(0x80000)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x49000000 src=0x8640000 len=1048576(0x100000)


U-Boot 2015.04 (Jun 09 2016 - 19:21:52)

CPU: Renesas Electronics R8A7795 rev 1.1
Board: H3ULCB
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  3.9 GiB
MMC:   sh-sdhi: 0, sh-sdhi: 1
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   Board Net Initialization Failed
No ethernet found.
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
=>

For machine m3ulcb:

NOTICE:  BL2: R-Car Gen3 Initial Program Loader(CA57) Rev.1.0.8
NOTICE:  BL2: PRR is R-Car M3 ES1.0
NOTICE:  BL2: LCM state is CM
NOTICE:  BL2: DDR1600(rev.0.15)
NOTICE:  BL2: DRAM Split is 2ch
NOTICE:  BL2: QoS is default setting(rev.0.14)
NOTICE:  BL2: AVS setting succeeded. DVFS_SetVID=0x52
NOTICE:  BL2: Lossy Decomp areas
NOTICE:       Entry 0: DCMPAREACRAx:0x80000540 DCMPAREACRBx:0x570
NOTICE:       Entry 1: DCMPAREACRAx:0x40000000 DCMPAREACRBx:0x0
NOTICE:       Entry 2: DCMPAREACRAx:0x20000000 DCMPAREACRBx:0x0
NOTICE:  BL2: v1.1(release):41099f4
NOTICE:  BL2: Built : 09:24:53, Nov 24 2016
NOTICE:  BL2: Normal boot
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0xe630f068 src=0x8180000 len=36(0x24)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x43f00000 src=0x8180400 len=3072(0xc00)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x44000000 src=0x81c0000 len=65536(0x10000)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x44100000 src=0x8200000 len=524288(0x80000)
NOTICE:  BL2: dst=0x49000000 src=0x8640000 len=1048576(0x100000)


U-Boot 2015.04 (Nov 30 2016 - 18:25:18)

CPU: Renesas Electronics R8A7796 rev 1.0
Board: M3ULCB
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  1.9 GiB
MMC:   sh-sdhi: 0, sh-sdhi: 1
In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   Board Net Initialization Failed
No ethernet found.
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
=>

Configure U-boot parameters

Follow the steps below to configure the boot from microSD card and to set screen resolution:

Turn the board on using the power switch.
Hit any key to stop autoboot (warning you have only few seconds).

Type print to check if you have correct parameters for booting your board:

For machine m3ulcb:

=> printenv
baudrate=115200
bootargs=console=ttySC0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk1p1 rootwait ro rootfstype=ext4
bootcmd=run load_ker; run load_dtb; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000
bootdelay=3
fdt_high=0xffffffffffffffff
initrd_high=0xffffffffffffffff
load_dtb=ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48000000 /boot/Image-r8a7795-h3ulcb.dtb
load_ker=ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48080000 /boot/Image
stderr=serial
stdin=serial
stdout=serial
ver=U-Boot 2015.04 (Jun 09 2016 - 19:21:52)

Environment size: 648/131068 bytes

For machine h3ulcb:

=> printenv
baudrate=115200
bootargs=console=ttySC0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk1p1 rootwait ro rootfstype=ext4
bootcmd=run load_ker; run load_dtb; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000
bootdelay=3
fdt_high=0xffffffffffffffff
filesize=cdeb
initrd_high=0xffffffffffffffff
load_dtb=ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48000000 /boot/Image-r8a7796-m3ulcb.dtb
load_ker=ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48080000 /boot/Image
stderr=serial
stdin=serial
stdout=serial
ver=U-Boot 2015.04 (Nov 30 2016 - 18:25:18)

Environment size: 557/131068 bytes

If not, copy line by line:

setenv bootargs console=ttySC0,115200 root=/dev/mmcblk1p1 rootwait ro rootfstype=ext4
setenv bootcmd run load_ker\; run load_dtb\; booti 0x48080000 - 0x48000000
setenv load_ker ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48080000 /boot/Image

For machine h3ulcb (BSP >= 2.19):

setenv load_dtb ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48000000 /boot/Image-r8a7795-es1-h3ulcb.dtb

For machine h3ulcb (BSP < 2.19):

setenv load_dtb ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48000000 /boot/Image-r8a7795-h3ulcb.dtb

For machine m3ulcb:

setenv load_dtb ext4load mmc 0:1 0x48000000 /boot/Image-r8a7796-m3ulcb.dtb

Finally save boot environment:

saveenv

Now you can boot:

run bootcmd

Console boot

After booting, you should see the wayland display on the external monitor and a login prompt on the console, such as:

For machine h3ulcb:

Automotive Grade Linux 3.0.0+snapshot-20161201 h3ulcb ttySC0

h3ulcb login: root

For machine m3ulcb:

Automotive Grade Linux 3.0.0+snapshot-20161201 m3ulcb ttySC0

m3ulcb login: root

Logging in on the console is easy:

login is ‘root’
password is empty (not asked)

Network access

If the board is connected to a local network using ethernet and if a DHCP server is able to distribute IP addresses, you can then determine the Gen3 board IP address and log in using ssh:

m3ulcb login: root
Last login: Tue Dec  6 09:55:15 UTC 2016 on tty2
root@m3ulcb:~# ip -4 a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default 
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet 10.0.0.27/24 brd 10.0.0.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
root@m3ulcb:~#

Here, IP address is 10.0.0.27. Logging in using SSH is easy:

$ ssh [email protected]
Last login: Tue Dec  6 10:01:11 2016 from 10.0.0.13
root@m3ulcb:~# cat /etc/os-release 
ID="poky-agl"
NAME="Automotive Grade Linux"
VERSION="3.0.0+snapshot-20161202 (chinook)"
VERSION_ID="3.0.0-snapshot-20161202"
PRETTY_NAME="Automotive Grade Linux 3.0.0+snapshot-20161202 (chinook)"