The official Mender documentation explains how Mender works. This is a board-specific complement to the official documentation.
Device description
The i.MX 6ULL EVK is a market-focused development tool based on the i.MX 6ULL applications processor. The i.MX6 ULL processor is part of an efficient and cost-optimized product family that features an advanced implementation of a single Arm® Cortex®-A7 core operating at speeds of up to 900 MHz. This EVK enables an LCD display and audio playback as well as many connectivity options. It is designed to showcase the most commonly used features of the processor in a small, low-cost package and to facilitate software development with the ultimate goal of faster time to market through the support of the Linux® operating system.
Test results
The Yocto Project releases in the table below have been tested by the Mender community. Please update it if you have tested this integration on other Yocto Project releases :
| Yocto Project | Build | Runtime |
|---|---|---|
| rocko (imx-4.9.88-2.0.0_ga) |  |
|
Build Means that the Yocto Project build using this Mender integration completes without errors and outputs images.
Runtime Means that Mender has been verified to work on the board. For U-Boot-based boards, the integration checklist has been verified.
Getting Started
Prerequisites
- A supported Linux distribution and dependencies installed on your workstation/laptop as described in the Yocto Mega Manual
- NOTE. Instructions depend on which Yocto version you intend to use.
- Google repo tool installed and in your
PATH.
Configuring the build
Setup Yocto environment
Create a directory for your mender-imx6ull setup to live in and clone the
meta information.
mkdir mender-imx6ull && cd mender-imx6ull
Initialize repo manifest from NXP:
repo init -u https://source.codeaurora.org/external/imx/imx-manifest -b imx-linux-rocko -m imx-4.9.88-2.0.0_ga.xml
Download and Initialize repo manifest for our Mender layers
wget --directory-prefix .repo/manifests https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brianleePTL/meta-mender-community/rocko/meta-mender-nxp-imx6ull/scripts/imx-4.9.88-2.0.0_demo_mender.xml
repo init -m imx-4.9.88-2.0.0_demo_mender.xml
Fetch layers in manifest:
repo sync
Setup build environment:
Initialise the build environment:
DISTRO=fsl-imx-fb MACHINE=imx6ull14x14evk . fsl-setup-mender.sh -b build
Configure Mender server URL (optional)
This section is not required for a successful build but images that are generated by default are only suitable for usage with the Mender client in Standalone deployments, due to lack of server configuration.
You can edit the conf/local.conf file to provide your Mender server configuration, ensuring the generated images and Mender Artifacts are connecting to the Mender server that you are using. There should already be a commented section in the generated conf/local.conf file and you can simply uncomment the relevant configuration options and assign appropriate values to them.
Build for Hosted Mender:
# To get your tenant token:
# - log in to https://hosted.mender.io
# - click your email at the top right and then "My organization"
# - press the "COPY TO CLIPBOARD"
# - assign content of clipboard to MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN
#
MENDER_SERVER_URL = "https://hosted.mender.io"
MENDER_TENANT_TOKEN = "<copy token here>"
Build for Mender demo server:
# https://docs.mender.io/getting-started/create-a-test-environment
#
# Update IP address to match the machine running the Mender demo server
MENDER_DEMO_HOST_IP_ADDRESS = "192.168.0.100"
Building the image
You can now proceed with building an image:
bitbake core-image-minimal
Replace core-image-minimal with your desired image target.
Using the build output
After a successful build, the images and build artifacts are placed in build/tmp/deploy/images/imx6ull14x14evk/ .
build/tmp/deploy/images/imx8mqevk/core-image-minimal-imx6ull14x14evk.sdimgbuild/tmp/deploy/images/imx8mqevk/core-image-minimal-imx6ull14x14evk.mender
The disk image .sdimg is used to provision the device storage for devices without Mender running already. Please proceed to the official documentation on provisioning a new device for steps to do this.
On the other hand, if you already have Mender running on your device and want to deploy a rootfs update using this build, you should use the Mender Artifact files, which have .mender suffix. You can either deploy this Artifact in managed mode with the Mender server (upload it under Releases in the server UI) or by using the Mender client only in Standalone deployments.
References
- The sources of the Yocto integration can be found in meta-mender-community/meta-mender-nxp-imx6ull
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