I am compiling Linux Kernel to my ARM board. I have seen file called vmlinux generated in kernel root folder. Can someone give good explanation about this file and it's use.
vmlinux is a ELF format based file which is nothing but the uncompressed version of kernel image which can be used for debugging. The zImage or bzImage are the compressed version of kernel image which is normally used for booting.
The vmlinux as such directly cannot be used by UBoot. However, by addition of metadata info in the process of creation of uImage for vmlinux, it is possible to boot via UBoot.
The vmlinux is the boot file in ELF format, and then the initrd file (ram disk) is run in the same directory (/boot).
The vmlinux file is practically the kernel itself.
Related
I want to get kernel source code file name and line number of a kernel function from the function address that ftrace outputed on rapberry pi 3.
I tried addr2line -e /boot/kernel8.img [function address] on raspberry pi 3. But it returned addr2line: /boot/kernel8.img: File format not recognized.
note:
kernel8.img is customed kernel that i compiled. I cloned kernel source from https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux.git, checkouted to rpi-4.18.y, turned on CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO, and run make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- -j4. This compile work performed on ubuntu x86_64 linux kernel 4.15.0-23-generic. The type of kernel8.img is as follows.
$ file kernel8.img
kernel8.img: MS-DOS executable
thanks
You need to run addr2line against the vmlinux file (i.e. uncompressed/raw kernel binary). /boot/kernel8.img is, most probably, a zImage (i.e. compressed kernel).
You can find the vmlinux file in the root of your kernel sources after compilation.
How do I extract the kernel configuration from a kernel image file?
The kernel image file type is:
/boot/kernel7.img: Linux kernel ARM boot executable zImage (little-endian)
The kernel has been compiled with CONFIG_IKCONFIG enabled. However,
scripts/extract-ikconfig /boot/kernel7.img
returns
extract-ikconfig: Cannot find kernel config.
Note: I am trying the get the config without booting the kernel.
If the kernel has been compiled with CONFIG_IKCONFIG=m (note the m), the configuration in stored in a module (configs.ko) and not in the kernel itself. That's the reason why running extract-ikconfig on the kernel image fails.
In this case, we can extract the config from the configuration module:
/usr/src/$(uname -r)/scripts/extract-ikconfig \
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/kernel/configs.ko
I am trying to build a basic root filesystem using Buildroot, for an embedded system (the Banana PI D1).
I am using a kernel from an SDK supplied by the SoC vendor. From this repo I am using only the kernel, found in src/kernel.
There's nothing remarkable about the Buildroot configuration. It builds with no errors and the resulting root filesystem looks like it contains everything I would expect.
I have configured it to build the filesystem as an initramfs embedded within the zImage.
The kernel appears to start up correctly, but cannot load init and then panics:
Booting Linux on physical CPU 0
Linux version 3.4.35 (harmic#penski.harmic.moo.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 (Buildroot 2015.02) ) #7 Sat Mar 21 22:59:18 AEDT 2015
CPU: ARM926EJ-S [41069265] revision 5 (ARMv5TEJ), cr=00053177
...
Kernel command line: root=/dev/mtdblock1 ro init=/sbin/init mem=64M console=ttySAK0,115200
...
Freeing init memory: 4632K
Failed to execute /init
Failed to execute /sbin/init. Attempting defaults...
mmc0: host does not support reading read-only switch. assuming write-enable.
mmc0: new SDHC card at address 0007
mmcblk0: mmc0:0007 SD08G 7.42 GiB
mmcblk0: p1
Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/init.txt for guidance.
I have tried a number of troubleshooting steps:
I've built a root filesystem using this miniroot project (took some doing, as it is quite out of date). It booted OK, using the same kernel as I am trying to use with the buildroot root fs.
I've tried using both uClibc and eglibc
I've tried using Buildroot's own cross-tools as well as the cross tools supplied by the SoC vendor
I've confirmed that the built rootfs does include an /init (it does!)
There is a gist here containing the buildroot configuration, a copy of the kernel boot log, and a listing of the contents of the generated filesystem.
What steps can I take to troubleshoot this further?
Update:
The generated rootfs.cpio.gz weighs in at 2139200 bytes. I have read that there is a maximum size of initramfs you can use, but I have not been able to find where the hard limit is documented.
I have attached a listing of the generated root filesystem to the gist linked above.
I have unpacked the rootfs on the host and inspected it. /init contains this:
#!/bin/sh
# devtmpfs does not get automounted for initramfs
/bin/mount -t devtmpfs devtmpfs /dev
exec 0</dev/console
exec 1>/dev/console
exec 2>/dev/console
exec /sbin/init $*
/sbin/init is a symlink to /bin/busybox.
/bin/busybox is dynamically linked:
$ file busybox
busybox: setuid ELF 32-bit MSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, stripped
$ ../../../host/usr/bin/armeb-buildroot-linux-gnueabi-readelf -a busybox | grep "Shared library:"
0x00000001 (NEEDED) Shared library: [libc.so.6]
libc.so.6 is present in /lib. /lib32 is a symlink to /lib for good measure.
The device has 64M RAM.
Both the vendor's cross tools and the buildroot cross tools are set up for eabi
As suggested by #sawdust, the problem was that the CPU was not supposed to be run in big endian mode.
After changing the target to 'ARM (Little Endian)', cleaning and re-building, it now boots correctly.
In retrospect this should have been obvious - inspecting the vendor's kernel image:
$ file zImage
zImage: Linux kernel ARM boot executable zImage (little-endian)
I'm trying to compile a kernel (altered version of 2.6.32.9, found here https://github.com/rabeeh/linux-2.6.32.9). I am doing the compilation on a emulated ARM system (qemu) (yes, I should probably cross-compile, but that's a different topic) running Ubuntu Core (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Core) and the kernel (vmlinuz) from Ubuntu 11.04 (downloaded from http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/natty/main/installer-armel/current/images/versatile/netboot/vmlinuz).
After running make bzImage, I look in the arch/arm/boot folder, and find only a file called zImage. I tried using this zImage instead of the vmlinuz I downloaded from ubuntu.com in qemu, but that doesn't work, just shows a black screen. I guess zImage is not the same as bzImage, which is what I think vmlinuz (judging from different articles on the internet) is.
So, a few questions:
Why doesn't make bzImage produce a bzImage/vmlinuz?
Can I convert a vmlinux to a vmlinuz using for example mkimage (there are lots of guides on the opposite...)?
Thanks
The bzImage filename and make target was originally x86-specific (big zImage). Many of the bootloaders on architectures that are not equal to baremetal-x86 (SPARC, PPC, IA64, etc. and also Xen on *) directly take vmlinux (or one of its compressed forms, for example vmlinux.gz, aka zImage). I guess some maintainers just added bzImage as a make target name because they wanted to have the x86 madness on their arch as well.
I get the result you describe by asking qemu to emulate a different cpu than arm926ej-s. But booting versatilepb with the default cpu works. I've cross-compiled my kernel, and I compiled all the drivers into it (so I don't use initrd).
Just download 100MB arm-eabi toolchain from http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/sourcery-tools/sourcery-codebench/editions/lite-edition/ (it's free but they want your email, like the x86 Intel compiler). It has an installer, just say "next" until it's done, like on Windows. Then add the bin directory to your path:
export PATH=~/CodeSourcery/Sourcery_CodeBench_Lite_for_ARM_EABI/bin/:$PATH
Then go back to your kernel source dir and do
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- menuconfig
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- zImage modules
You can do
sudo make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=path_to_arm_root modules_install
if you can reach your ARM filesystem from the host. If you're using NFS root it's trivial, but if you're using a disk image you need to either:
use a raw disk image and kpartx (depends on your host kernel having dm-multipath) or
qemu-nbd which supports qcow (and depends on host kernel having network block device support)
To boot in qemu with disk you need the right drivers (SYM53C8XX SCSI). The versatile defconfig doesn't select those.
HI i want to run profiling on Kernel using Oprofile but it requires uncompressed vmlinux image and ubuntu 10.10 provides vmlinuz which is stripped and compressed. Pls help
You may need to rebuild the kernel from source or find an uncompressed copy of vmlinux. The vmlinuz file is stripped of symbols along with the ELF header to save space, and are needed for oprofile.
See this answer on Superuser for how to install an uncompressed (debug) version of your kernel.