Status of vf50 support

Technical Support
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1

Hi,

On majority of our products we are still using Colibri VF50.

Since long time I haven’t check it but recently I decided to clone toradex bsp 5.0 and see what is updated for VF50. I followed the instructions here: Build a Reference Image with Yocto Project/OpenEmbedded | Toradex Developer Center

And changed the local.conf to have MACHINE ?= "colibri-vf" and bitbake tdx-reference-minimal-image. It all went good, the image has been created.

I have couple of questions:

  1. It is written somewhere toradex bsp 5.0 doesn’t support vf50, but as I see this is not the case. Can you confirm that this is the official way to get latest updates for vf50?

  2. Above generated image contains Linux v4.4.217 while toradex-linux repo in toradex_vf_4.4 branch bumped to v4.4.291. Is v4.4.291 fully tested, available to use with vf50?

  3. What is the toradex strategy to maintain vf50 bsp and linux kernel?

Thank you.

3

Hi @Fide, how are you?

Thanks for reaching out. About your questions:

Although you’re able to build the BSP 5.0 with Yocto for the VF50, it was not properly tested on our side as this is not an official VF50 release. Therefore, we can’t support it properly if any issue arrives due to this build. You can check here that the latest release available for this module is the BSP 2.8.

I’m going to check this internally and I’ll come back to you soon.

Please refer to our Linux Support Strategy Page and feel free to come back here in case you’d need further explanations on what is done with the LTS releases: Embedded Linux Support Strategy | Toradex Developer Center

Please tell us if this helps.

Best regards,

4

Hi @gclaudino.tx ,

At first, I have tried to compile BSP 2.8 under Ubuntu 16 machine, but I got some compilation error for the linux kernel code. That was the reason I tried with BSP 5 and found it ok.

Any update here?

I meant that how often you update vf50? For example when was the last time you changed (updated, add some improvement or bug fixed) for colibri vf50?

Thank you.

5

Hi @Fide, how are you?

Thanks for the update.

I understand. Thanks for bringing this up. If you wish, you can share the compilation error with us and we can assist you in building the BSP 2.8 Image.

As the BSP 2.8 is the LTS and the latest commit mentions the Kernel version 4.4.291 and no other changes have been made to update it once more you may use this version without problems. It’s always recommended to use the most updated tools.

I’d recommend you to check the gitlog for Colibri VF linux-toradex.git - Linux kernel for Apalis, Colibri and Verdin modules. You can see there that the last commit was made in November 2021 and any update to this will be added on that same page. As this release is the LTS, Updates are not so frequent anymore. From the Support Strategy Page you can see the following LTS definition:

Maintenance Releases for Long Term Embedded Linux Release (LTS)​

Toradex continuously maintains LTS releases by providing bug fixes and security patches:

In case there are any hardware changes required e.g because of a component going end-of-life, Toradex fully supports and validates the new hardware version and does any necessary software backports to support them.

  • Those updates are provided to customers as maintenance releases in the form of source code and binary images.

Toradex provides updates for the software components. They consist of fixed versions of the U-Boot boot loader, Linux kernel and OpenEmbedded/Yocto Project components used on a specific Toradex LTS release.

  • Those updates are provided as long as the respective version of the components still receive updates. They are typically maintained for 2 - 3 years and are subject to each component’s release plan.
  • Toradex uses Longterm/Stable Linux kernels for its own LTS releases whenever possible. It ensures that Toradex LTS releases receive kernel updates for an extended period of time.

Please tell us if this clarifies your questions :smiley:

Best regards,

6

Hi @gclaudino.tx, I’m fine thank you, I hope you are fine too :slight_smile:

Your linux repo mentioned has 4.4.291 yes you are right.
But BSP2.8, when I attempt to compile (but failed), I saw in the yocto log, it tries to compile v4.4.217 which is not the latest one available in the repo.

Are you certain about that v4.4.291 is used in the BSP2.8 and fully tested for vf50?

7

Hi @Fide! How are you?

It appears that the problem is with the recipe used by Yocto that was not updated to the latest commit on the meta-freescale-3rdparty.

You can see on line 15 the mention of a 2017 commit. Can you please try the following change?

FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/${PN}-${PV}:"
require recipes-kernel/linux/linux-imx.inc

SUMMARY = "Linux kernel for Toradex Colibri VFxx Computer on Modules"

SRC_URI = "git://git.toradex.com/linux-toradex.git;protocol=git;branch=${SRCBRANCH} \
           file://defconfig"

KERNEL_MODULE_AUTOLOAD += "${@bb.utils.contains('COMBINED_FEATURES', 'usbgadget', ' libcomposite', '',d)}"

LOCALVERSION = "-2.7.4"
PV_append = "+git${SRCPV}"

SRCBRANCH = "toradex_vf_4.4"
- SRCREV = "e0f2806138a4eeb3c31abe0e0e767d0f6d9a13a3"
+ SRCREV = "4a0abd7dd466276ee3fdf79b54f05f845f7d8844"

DEPENDS += "lzop-native bc-native"
COMPATIBLE_MACHINE = "(vf)"

Here you can find the commit I propose you to change: 4a0abd7dd466276ee3fdf79b54f05f845f7d8844

Can you please give it a try?

Best regards,

8

Hi @gclaudino.tx ,

I think that the reference needs to be updated in layers/meta-toradex-nxp/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-toradex_4.4.bbappend
Not in linux-toradex_4.4.bb directly since it is overwritten by the bbappend file.

After updating the reference in the bbappend file, I got another error while bitbaking the reference image: ERROR: Task (../layers/meta-toradex-bsp-common/recipes-kernel/backports/backports_5.4.bb:do_compile) failed with exit code '1'

But my question is again, is this image fully tested or not?
What kind of automated test system do you have for vf50?
For example, are you sure that with the kernel above, I2C is fully functional or not?

Thank you.

9

Hi @Fide, sorry for the delay I was checking internally the information to answer you properly on the topic.

I also discussed this again internally and the ideal way would be to:

  1. Check the latest manifest available and update the folders with repo update
  2. Verify the layers and recipes to check if the commits are accordingly
  3. Once the recipes are validated to have the newest commits then you can build your image accordingly

After the release has been defined as LTS, the newer releases represent just smaller corrections and adjustments. As stated on the Embedded Linux Support Strategy | Toradex Developer Center the LTS releases are qualified through full-testing.

Our test system for our general BSP releases includes verifications like: booting, entering recovery mode, I2C, gpio and more to check if the important interfaces are working properly.

From our tests, we couldn’t find any specific I2C problem for this release but if you find any problem while using it, please feel free to report it here.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

10

Hi @Fide !

Do you have news on this topic?

Were you able to solve this? If yes, I would like to ask you to mark the related answer as the solution :slight_smile:

Best regards,