Difference between revisions of "Elphel Software Kit for Ubuntu"

Revision as of 22:44, 24 May 2007

All Elphel cameras are packaged with a DVD what can be used as a Live DVD or installed on the disc. This DVD is kubuntu based GNU/Linux distribution with some additional softwares and preconfigured settings. This page describe the content of the DVD, how to use and customize it.

The idea is to bring to our customers a GNU/Linux distribution what whey can use with our cameras installing it on they computers or using it as LiveDVD. On the other side it provide more advanced users and developers with many tools to cros-compile, simulate FPGA code, reflash the camera etc..

DVD content:

Our DVD differ from standard kubuntu in several way:

• it include all softwares needed by users of our cameras
• we added some video editing & images processing softwares
• it include softwares for software and hardware developers
• some configuration file are modified to suit our needs
• some OpenSource applications for Windows (R)

User software

For users we provide:

• flashit icon on the desktop to reflash our cameras with the latest firmware
• Firefox web browser with mplayer and genres plugin to provide live view of our cameras
• LAMP based DVR to provide a simple way to record video and audio from our cameras

Video Applications:

• mplayer
• genres
• VLC
• gstreamer
• cinerella
• cinepaint
• ImageMagick
• gocr
• mjpegtools
• avifie-utils
• ElphelSrv
• DVR software

Elphel SDK

We provide our clients with a complete SDK to develop software, FPGA code and even to redesign the hardware.

• Eclipse IDE
• VDT verilog plugin for Eclipse IDE
• LAMP preinstalled on the DVD
• GTKWave
• Qcad
• Kicad
• iverilog
• GNURadio
• dash shell is replaced with bash to comply with Axis SDK

OpenSource applications for Windows (R)

If you insert our DVD into a windows computer you will be able to install opensource softwares to use with our camera:

• Mozills FireFox
• mplayer-win
• VLC

Special configurations

• ...
• ...

Remastering the DVD:

Our distribution is based on Kubuntu GNU/Linux. You can remaster it from Live session with an external hard-drive or after installing our base distribution on your computer. Here i suppose what it's installed and you have sufficient space (~6 GO).

So here is the modification process:

prepare the environment:

sudo su
cd
mount /media/cdrom
mkdir remaster-root remaster-iso  remaster-new-files tmp
cp -R /media/cdrom/* remaster-iso
mount -t squashfs -o loop,ro remaster-iso/casper/filesystem.squashfs tmp
cp -R tmp/* remaster-root
umount tmp
rmdir tmp

modify the distribution:

mount --bind /proc remaster-root/proc
mount --bind /sys remaster-root/sys
mount --bind /dev remaster-root/dev
chroot remaster-root
#install your softwares, remove unneeded softwares modify configuration files, ...
apt-get remove nano
apt-get install vim
apt-get clean
exit
umount remaster-root/dev
umount remaster-root/sys
umount remaster-root/proc

rebuild the DVD:

chroot . dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package} ${Version}\n' > ../remaster-iso/casper/filesystem.manifest
chroot . dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Package} ${Version}\n' > ../remaster-iso/casper/filesystem.manifest-desktop
mksquashfs .  ../remaster-iso/casper/filesystem.squashfs
cd ../remaster-iso
find . -type f -print0 |xargs -0 md5sum |sudo tee md5sum.txt
mkisofs -o ../remaster-new-files/Elphel-Software-Kit.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -r -V "Elphel Software Kit" -cache-inodes -J -l .

What's all :) you have a new DVD image in /root/remaster-new-files/Elphel-Software-Kit.iso