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Tutorials

Building Linux for a RISC-V Board — Part 5: Booting a Signed FIT over TFTP

Booting a signed FIT over TFTP on QEMU RISC-V: why verification does not care where the bytes came from, and what the…

RB Nov 1 · 13 min

Tutorials

Building Linux for a RISC-V Board — Part 4: A Signed FIT Image U-Boot Will Verify

Build a signed FIT image holding the kernel, devicetree and boot script, and make U-Boot refuse a boot whose signature does not…

RB Oct 27 · 14 min

Tutorials

Building Linux for a RISC-V Board — Part 3: A Root Filesystem on a virtio Block Device

Put a real root filesystem on a virtio block device, let U-Boot find it, and boot it from a script instead of…

RB Oct 18 · 14 min

Tutorials

Building Linux for a RISC-V Board — Part 2: Building OpenSBI Firmware and U-Boot from Source

Build the OpenSBI firmware and U-Boot for RISC-V from source, then boot a kernel through the full chain in QEMU. The addresses…

RB Oct 4 · 17 min

Tutorials

Building Linux for a RISC-V Board — Part 1: Cross-Compiling a RISC-V Linux Kernel and Booting It on OpenSBI

Build a RISC-V Linux kernel from source, pack a minimal initramfs, and boot it on OpenSBI under QEMU — with the real…

RB Sep 28 · 17 min

Tutorials

Boot a Custom Linux Kernel in QEMU with a Minimal Initramfs

Boot a custom Linux kernel in QEMU with a minimal BusyBox initramfs: build the cpio, wire the console, and insmod a module…

RB Sep 24 · 8 min

Tutorials

Cross-Compile the Linux Kernel for ARM64 and Boot It in QEMU

Cross-compile the Linux kernel for ARM64, build a BusyBox initramfs, and boot the system in QEMU using exact, reproducible commands and expected…

RB Sep 11 · 7 min

Tutorials

Real-Time Linux with PREEMPT_RT — Part 5: Tracing Latency Sources with ftrace

A high latency number tells you a problem exists, not where it comes from. This final part of the series covers tracing…

RB Sep 7 · 9 min

Tutorials

Buildroot for Embedded Linux — Part 2: Adding Packages and a BR2_EXTERNAL Tree

Set up a Buildroot BR2_EXTERNAL tree so your defconfig and board files live outside the Buildroot source, then build out of tree…

RB Sep 6 · 13 min

Tutorials

Real-Time Linux with PREEMPT_RT — Part 4: Writing RT-Safe User-Space Code

RT-safe user-space code for PREEMPT_RT: lock memory with mlockall, create SCHED_FIFO threads correctly, and use PTHREAD_PRIO_INHERIT mutexes.

RB Aug 28 · 12 min

Tutorials

Buildroot for Embedded Linux — Part 1: Your First Buildroot Root Filesystem

Build your first Buildroot root filesystem for ARM and boot it under QEMU. Part 1 of a hands-on Buildroot series for embedded…

RB Aug 23 · 8 min

Tutorials

The regmap Subsystem: One Register API Across I2C, SPI and MMIO

Build a Linux I2C driver with the regmap subsystem: regmap_config, probe, the register cache, suspend and resume, and debugfs. Complete buildable code.

RB Aug 16 · 11 min

Tutorials

Capturing a Kernel Crash Dump with kdump on ARM64

Set up kdump on an ARM64 board: reserve crashkernel memory, load a capture kernel with kexec -p, then trigger a panic and…

RB Aug 11 · 14 min

Tutorials

Kernel Dynamic Debug: Turning On pr_debug at Runtime

Kernel dynamic debug turns pr_debug and dev_dbg messages on at runtime, per file, function or module, with no kernel rebuild. A hands-on…

RB Aug 9 · 11 min

Tutorials

The cachestat() Syscall: Reading Linux Page-Cache Stats from User Space

The cachestat syscall, added in Linux 6.5, reports page-cache residency for a file from user space. Call it with a worked C…

RB Aug 4 · 9 min

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