Freedom Unleashed Software Development Kit
The new experimental Freedom Unleashed (FU) SDK is based on OpenEmbedded (OE). It's a minimal meta-sifive layer on top of meta-riscv to provide additional modifications and new disk image targets. Using OE you will be able to:
unmatchedmachine on your particular board. If you received the final board (16GB) via Mouser or CrowdSupply you should skip 2021.02.00 release.
For more information on particular release see
ReleaseNotesdirectory in freedom-u-sdk repository on GitHub.
The old SDK based on Buildroot is archived in
archive/buildrootbranch.
For advanced OE usage we advice to look into Yocto Project Documentation and A practical guide to BitBake.
Install
repocommand from Google if not available on your host system. Please follow the official instructions by Google.
Then install a number of packages for BitBake (OE build tool) to work properly on your host system. BitBake itself depends on Python 3. Once you have Python 3 installed BitBake should be able to tell you most of the missing packages.
For Ubuntu 18.04 (or newer) install python3-distutils package.
Detailed instructions for various distributions can be found in "Required Packages for the Build Host" section in Yocto Project Reference Manual.
This needs to be done every time you want a clean setup based on the latest layers.
mkdir riscv-sifive && cd riscv-sifive repo init -u git://github.com/sifive/meta-sifive -b 2021.02 -m tools/manifests/sifive.xml repo sync
If you want to make modifications to existing layers then creating working branches in all repositories is advisable.
repo start work --all
OpenEmbedded-Core requires GCC 6 or newer to be available on the host system. Your host system might have an older version of GCC if you use LTS (Long Term Support) Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu 16.04.6 has GCC 5.4.0). You could solve this issue by installing build tools. This requires less than 400MB of disk space. You can download pre-built one or build your own build tools.
./openembedded-core/scripts/install-buildtools -r yocto-3.2_M2 -t 20200729
The native SDK will be installed under
$BUILDDIR/../openembedded-core/buildtoolsprefix.
Finally you should be able to use build tools:
. ./openembedded-core/buildtools/environment-setup-x86_64-pokysdk-linux
Your host needs to have GCC 6 (or newer) or build tools installed from Option 1.
You can find pre-built tools from the same release source in GitHub release assets.
To build your own build tools execute the command below:
bitbake buildtools-extended-tarball
You can find the native SDK under
$BUILDDIR/tmp-glibc/deploy/sdk/directory.
Now you can install build tools:
$BUILDDIR/tmp-glibc/deploy/sdk/x86_64-buildtools-extended-nativesdk-standalone-nodistro.0.sh -d $BUILDDIR/../openembedded-core/buildtools -y
Finally you should be able to use your build tools:
. $BUILDDIR/../openembedded-core/buildtools/environment-setup-x86_64-oesdk-linux
This step has to be done after you modify your environment with toolchain you want to use otherwise wrong host tools might be available in the package build environment. For example,
gccfrom host system will be used for building
*-nativepackages.
. ./meta-sifive/setup.sh
You can verify and fix your host tools by checking symlinks in
$BUILDDIR/tmp-glibc/hosttoolsdirectory.
There are 3 variables that control the number of parallel tasks/jobs BitBake will use:
BB_NUMBER_PARSE_THREADS,
BB_NUMBER_THREADSand
PARALLEL_MAKE. The last two are the most important, and both are set to number of cores available on the system. You can set them in your
$BUILDDIR/conf/local.confor in your shell environment similar to how
MACHINEis used (see next section). Example:
PARALLEL_MAKE="-j 4" BB_NUMBER_THREADS=4 MACHINE=freedom-u540 bitbake demo-coreip-cli
Leaving defaults could cause high load averages, high memory usage, high IO wait and could make your system unresponsive due to resources overuse. The defaults should be changed based on your system configuration.
There are two disk image targets added by meta-sifive layer:
demo-coreip-cli- basic command line image (recommended);
demo-coreip-xfce4- basic graphical disk image with Xfce 4 desktop environment.
By default disk images do not include debug packages. If you want to produce disk images with debug packages append
-debug(e.g.
demo-coreip-cli-debug) to the disk image target.
There are two machine targets currently tested:
qemuriscv64- RISC-V 64-bit (RV64GC) for QEMU virt machine;
freedom-u540- SiFive HiFive Unleashed development board with or without HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi.
unmatched- SiFive HiFive Unmatched development board (Only for pre-production 8GB variant. Contact your SiFive representative before using disk images built for
unmatchedmachine.)
It's not possible to use disk images built for
freedom-u540with QEMU 4.0 and instructions provided below.Building disk images is CPU intensive, could require <10GB of sources downloaded over the Internet and <200GB of local storage.
Building disk image takes a single command which may take anything from 30 minutes to several hours depending on your hardware. Examples:
MACHINE=qemuriscv64 bitbake demo-coreip-cli MACHINE=freedom-u540 bitbake demo-coreip-cli MACHINE=freedom-u540 bitbake demo-coreip-xfce4 MACHINE=unmatched bitbake demo-coreip-xfce4
OE provides easy to use wrapper for QEMU:
MACHINE=qemuriscv64 runqemu nographic slirp
You will find all available build fragments (incl. disk images) in
$BUILDDIR/tmp-glibc/deploy/images/$MACHINEwhere
MACHINEis
freedom-u540or
unmatched.
Disk images files use
format, for example,-.
demo-coreip-cli-freedom-u540.wic.xz. We are interested in
.wic.xzdisk images for writing to uSD card.
Be very careful while picking /dev/sdX device! Look at dmesg, lsblk, blkid, GNOME Disks, etc. before and after plugging in your uSD card to find a proper device. Double check it to avoid overwriting any of system disks/partitions!
Unmount any mounted partitions from uSD card before writing!
We advice to use 32GB uSD cards. 8GB cards (shipped with HiFive Unleashed) can still be used with
demo-coreip-cliCLI images.
Finally write uSD card:
xzcat demo-coreip-cli-freedom-u540.wic.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=512K iflag=fullblock oflag=direct conv=fsync status=progress
You will need to modify MSEL to allow using U-Boot SPL, OpenSBI, U-Boot proper bootloaders from uSD card instead of SPI-NOR Flash chip:
USB LED Mode Select Ethernet +===|___|==****==+-+-+-+-+-+-+=================|******|===+ | | | | | |X| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | HFXSEL->|X|X|X|X| |X| |______| | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | RTCSEL-----/ 0 1 2 3MSEL for Unmatched
By default MSEL on Unmatched is set to use uSD instead of SPI-NOR Flash chip to load U-Boot SPL, OpenSBI and U-Boot proper. Below is the default configuration for DIP switches (located next to Assembly Number and RTC battery):
+----------> CHIPIDSEL | +--------> MSEL3 | | +------> MSEL2 | | | +----> MSEL1 | | | | +--> MSEL0 | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+ | |X| |X|X| ON(1) | | | | | | |X| |X| | | OFF(0) +-+-+-+-+-+ BOOT MODE SELConnecting Using Serial Console
Connect your HiFive Unleashed or HiFive Unmatched to your PC using microUSB-USB cable to access serial console.
For macOS, run:
screen -L /dev/tty.usbserial-*01 115200For Linux, run:
screen -L /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_Dual_RS232-HS-if01-port0 115200The above commands might vary depending on your exact setup.
-Lcommand will log all output toscreenlog.0in your current working directory.To quit screen, hit
Ctrl - Afollowed by\symbol. Finally agree to terminate all windows by typingy.You can login with
rootaccount. The password issifive. We strongly recommend to change the default password for the root account on the first boot before you connect it to the Internet.Connecting Using SSH
Before you connect your board to the Internet we strongly recommend to change the default password for the root account and configure your network equipment (for example, routers and firewalls) appropriately.
SSH daemon is not enabled by default. To enable SSH daemon connect to the board using serial console method described above. Once connected execute the following commands:
systemctl enable sshd.socket systemctl start sshd.socketThe HiFive Unleashed and Unmatched behave like any other network capable device (such as PC, laptop, and Single Board Computers like Raspberry Pi). Connect the board to your network (for example, a router), and it will acquire IPv4 + DNS configuration using DHCP protocol. You can use your router management panel to get assigned IPv4 address or use the serial console to acquire it directly from the board (use
ip addrcommand to print active network information). Finally you can SSH to the board:ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password -o PubkeyAuthentication=no -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o "UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null" [email protected]Supported GPUs
Various GPUs from AMD were successfully tested with the boards. In particular Radeon HD 6450 is the most widely used. Other GPUs from the same family might also work, for instance, THD64xxM, HD7450, HD8450, R5 230, R5 235, R5 235X. The newest tested GPUs from AMD are RX 550, RX 570, RX 580 with no issues.
For HiFive Unleashed with HiFive Expansion Board from Microsemi we advice to use Radeon HD 6450 or RX 550. These cards were tested with power supply (12V 5A) which came with the expansion board.
Online Resizing of rootfs (Root File Partition)
It is highly advised to resize partitions offline (i.e. before booting the system). If you already booted the system and cannot do offline resizing then the following instructions should resize rootfs (root file partition) to full uSD capacity:
sgdisk -v /dev/mmcblk0 sgdisk -e /dev/mmcblk0 parted /dev/mmcblk0 resizepart 4 100% resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p4 syncContributions & Feedback
If you want to file issues, send patches and make feature/enhancement requests use meta-sifive or freedom-u-sdk repositories on GitHub.
You are also welcome to join SiFive Forums where we have HiFive Unleashed and HiFive Unmatched categories for discussions.
Known Issues
Avoid overclocking SOC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.
There is no CPUFreq support enabled on HiFive Unmatched.
If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.
OpenEmbedded Core (and thus meta-sifive) does not support eCryptFS or any other file system without long file names support. File systems must support filenames up to 200 characters in length.
BitBake requires UTF-8 based locale (e.g.
en_US.UTF-8). You can choose any locale as long as it is UTF-8. This usually happens in containers (e.g. ubuntu:18.04). You can verify your locale by runninglocalecommand. On Ubuntu 18.04 you can change locale following these instructions:apt update apt install locales locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LANG="en_US.UTF-8" localeYou can change system default locale with
dpkg-reconfigure localescommand.