Do you know how it feels when you have an itch, and you just have to scratch it? Well, after an extended hiatus from writing, I felt an overwhelming compulsion to do another MinnowBoard image build with source and symbols, do some more exploring, and then blog about it.
Eureka again! I finally figured out how to use Yocto to build a Linux kernel with all of the symbolic debug information, so that I can see all of the source code and symbols within SourcePoint.
I keep taking detours! This week, I built a Linux debug image, and looked at kernel source and symbols using SourcePoint, our JTAG-based hardware-assisted debugger.
In Episode 41, Hacking the Linux Kernel, Part 2, I successfully hacked the Linux kernel, both on a native Linux partition, and within a Ubuntu VM on VirtualBox, by using the general directions within the Linux Newbies First Kernel Patch tutorial. This week, I worked towards hacking the Linux kernel using a Yocto-based qemux86 on VirtualBox, as a final step towards actually hacking the kernel on my MinnowBoard.
This past week, I tried a few more things to get my AMD PC to successfully build a bootable Linux image for my MinnowBoard. Then, I got my hands on a Microsoft Surface Pro.
It’s been a few months since I did any work with my MinnowBoard; time seems to fly by during the summer. In this episode, I pick up where I left off, doing various Yocto builds as I worked towards source-level debug of the Linux kernel. But, I’m having mysterious build failures, with some of the segmentation fault symptoms I had months ago before I RMA’ed my AMD CPU. Could this be raising its ugly head again?
You can always count on Larry Traylor to crank out useful new content for engineers. This time, he’s updated our Application Note on UEFI Debugging using SourcePoint on Intel Platforms.
In the last episode of the Chronicles, I explored System Management Mode on the MinnowBoard. SourcePoint helped me see its basic operation, but only in object code format. Can I learn more by exploring the source code?