Open Source Summit Europe 2024

This presentation will show a step-by-step guide from hardware design to a fully functional Linux system. Initial considerations in the hardware design phase will help simplify the bringup. This includes designing for testability and incorporating features that make debugging easier, such as having accessible test points and providing instrumentation, such as a serial console and a JTAG interface. The next phase involves the bootloader, which is the first software component to run on the system. At this stage, we can use JTAG for early debugging to get some text output and eventually a console. The transition to the Linux kernel involves strategies that may include using JTAG again for early kernel debugging, followed by using printk and KDB for later diagnostics. The final phase involves the root file system and userspace tools that help bring up the rest of the peripherals. This final section of the presentation shows some userspace diagnostic and debugging tools for successfully getting a Linux-based system up and running.