The Intel Edison board is shipped with the Yocto Linux distribution installed. Yocto allows an experienced developer to compile a small-size Linux image with only the selected packages. Then the image is flashed into the board. It’s not as convenient as Ubuntu as there are no pre-compiled packages that are easy to install.

I wanted to add the program mc (Midnight Commander); so, I had to recompile the Yocto image. My computer OS is Linux Ubuntu 14.04. I experienced a few problems while compiling; so, I’ll describe them here.

The main document is Board Support Package (BSP) User Guide. I followed it.

Installed the prerequisite packages with the following command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential git diffstat gawk chrpath texinfo libtool \
gcc-multilib dfu-util u-boot-tools

Set up my git name and email:

git config --global user.name "YOUR NAME"
git config --global user.email "YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS"

Downloaded the package Linux source files from the Intel Edison Software Downloads page. At the time of writing, it was in the section Intel Edison? Board Firmware Software Release 2.1.

I install everything related to the Intel Edison into the directory /home/farit/edison. The Linux sources consume 11G in that directory.

Decompressed the source package:

tar xzf edison-src-ww25.5-15.tgz  -C /home/farit/edison/
cd /home/farit/edison/edison-src/

Moved my download and build cache (also called sstate) directories from the default location under the build directory, using the –dl_dir and –sstate_dir options. To create download and sstate directory, used the mkdir command:

mkdir /home/farit/edison/bitbake_download_dir
mkdir /home/farit/edison/bitbake_sstate_dir

Used the setup.sh script to initialize the build environment for Intel Edison.

/home/farit/edison/edison-src/meta-intel-edison/setup.sh \
--dl_dir=/home/farit/edison/bitbake_download_dir \
--sstate_dir=/home/farit/edison/bitbake_sstate_dir \
--build_dir=/home/farit/edison/edison-src

After the setup, I ran these commands recommended by the setup script:

cd /home/farit/edison/edison-src
source poky/oe-init-build-env
bitbake edison-image

The compilation took 5 or so hours. I should’ve used the SSD disk. But most files have been downloaded and cached now; so, it doesn’t take much time the second time.

Then I decided to compile in Midnight Commander. I checked the name of the package on the Yocto recipes directory. It was “mc”.
I opened the file /home/farit/edison/edison-src/meta-intel-edison/meta-intel-edison-distro/recipes-core/images/edison-image.bb and added the lines at the bottom:

#Midnight Commander
IMAGE_INSTALL += "mc"

Then ran again:

cd /home/farit/edison/edison-src
source poky/oe-init-build-env
bitbake edison-image

Then I created a new Linux image:

/home/farit/edison/edison-src/meta-intel-edison/utils/flash/postBuild.sh
/home/farit/edison/edison-src/build/toFlash/flashall.sh

At first, the command complained about the non-existing mkimage program, which is in the package u-boot-tools:

Error : ota_update.scr creation failed, mkimage tool not found

I added a symlink to mkimage and ran the postBuild.sh script again:

cd /home/farit/edison/edison-src
mkdir -p u-boot/tools
cd u-boot/tools
ln -s /usr/bin/mkimage mkimage

When there were no errors, I looked in the directory /home/farit/edison/edison-src/build/toFlash. It contained the same files as in the Intel’s firmware image.
I ran the command flashall.sh in it as root. I added myself into the group “dialout”; so, I should be able to connect to a USB port as a regular user. I’ll check it again the next time.

By default, the subshell (Ctrl-O) doesn’t work in Midnight Commander as it requires bash. Change your user shell from the default “/bin/sh” to “/bin/bash” in /etc/passwd.

When I want to quickly recompile just the kernel after changes, I run these commands:

cd /home/farit/edison/edison-src
source poky/oe-init-build-env
bitbake -f linux-yocto