i.MX8 - iMX8MEVK - Getting Started - Loading Pre-built Images
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Contents
Yocto Images
Prebuilt images are .sdcard files, disk images that can be flashed directly to any SD card. These .sdcard files are the simplest way to evaluate the board and Linux features since they easily flash all the required components to boot the iMX8M EVK.
The .sdcard file includes the 4 elements required to boot the board:
- Bootloader
- Linux kernel image
- Device tree
- Root file system
You can get the prebuilt images from the latest Linux BSP. You need to decompress the BSP and decompress the bz2 image sdcard included in it.
For BSP L4.9.88_2.0.0 run:
##
## BSP and IMAGE_NAME in the example may not match exactly your BSP version.
## Please make sure you set them accordingly.
##
BSP=L4.9.88_2.0.0_images_MX8MQ
tar -xvf $BSP.tar.gz
cd $BSP
IMAGE_NAME=fsl-image-qt5-validation-imx-xwayland-imx8mqevk
bunzip2 -dk -f $IMAGE_NAME.sdcard.bz2
Write the image to the SD Card
DEVICE=/dev/sdX # The device may change in your system sudo dd if=$IMAGE_NAME.sdcard of=$DEVICE bs=4M && sync
Android Images
This section describes the boot process of loading the i.MX8MQuad EVK board with an Embedded Android system image and introduces how to build the software components that create your own system image.
Image Storage
The storage devices on the development system (MMC/SD or NAND) must be programmed with the U-Boot boot loader. The boot process determines which storage device to access based on the switch settings. When the boot loader is loaded and begins execution, the U-Boot environment space is then read to determine how to proceed with the boot process.
Image Types
The images can come from pre-built release packages or be created from source code. Regardless of how you obtain them, all Android images contain the following components:
- U-Boot image: u-boot.imx
- Boot image: boot.img
- Android system root image: system.img
- Recovery root image: recovery.img
For more information about the Android BSP refer to the Android User Guide.
Get NXP Android BSP Image
The pre-built images from the package are categorized by boot device and put in the directory with the device name. The latest pre-built image files can be found in Android section on the i.MX Software and Development Tool, or on the demo images downloader link.
You can get the prebuilt images from the latest Linux BSP. You need to decompress the BSP and decompress the bz2 image sdcard included in it.
Loading images onto an SD Card
Partition the SD card
Once you download the pre-built images, the following script can be used to partition an SD card:
cd ${MY_ANDROID}/
sudo ./device/fsl/common/tools/fsl-sdcard-partition.sh -f imx8mq /dev/sdX
Where the X in /dev/sdX is the disk index from 'a' to 'z'.
SD Requirements
NOTE: The minimum SD card size required is 8 GB.
Different SD card sizes require different partition scripts:
- If the SD card is 8 GB, use:
sudo ./device/fsl/common/tools/fsl-sdcard-partition.sh -f imx8mq /dev/sdX
- If the SD card is 16 GB, use:
sudo ./device/fsl/common/tools/fsl-sdcard-partition.sh -f imx8mq -c 14 /dev/sdX
- If the SD card is 32 GB, use:
sudo ./device/fsl/common/tools/fsl-sdcard-partition.sh -f imx8mq -c 28 /dev/sdX
NOTE: Unmount all the SD card partitions before running the script:
umount /dev/sdX
Copy the related boot-loader, boot image, system image, recovery image, GPT table image, and vendor image in your current directory. This script requires to install the simg2img tool on the computer. simg2img is a tool that converts the sparse system image to raw system image on the Linux OS host computer. The android-toolsfsutils package includes the simg2img command for Ubuntu Linux OS.
