Category: Technical

This article follows two earlier blog posts about Device Tree overlays:

• Using Device Tree Overlays, example on BeagleBone boards
• Device Tree: Supporting Similar Boards – The BeagleBone Example

Introduction

As explained in the first two blog posts, the BeagleBone boards are supported by a wide number of extension boards, called capes.

When such a cape is plugged in, the description of the devices connected to the board should be updated accordingly. As the available hardware is described by a Device Tree, the added devices on the cape should be described using a Device Tree Overlay, as described in the first blog post.

As explained in this post too, the bootloader is today’s standard place for loading Device Tree Overlays on top of the board’s Device Tree. Once you know which capes are plugged in, you can load them in U-Boot and boot Linux as in the following example:

load mmc 0:1 0x81000000 zImage
load mmc 0:1 0x82000000 am335x-boneblack.dtb
fdt addr 0x82000000
fdt resize 8192
load mmc 0:1 0x83000000 overlays/BBORG_RELAY-00A2.dtbo
fdt apply 0x83000000
bootz 0x81000000 - 0x82000000

This mechanism works fine, but every time you plug in a different cape, you have to tweak this sequence of commands to load the right overlay (the .dtbo file). This would be great if each cape could be detected automatically and so could be the corresponding overlays.

Actually, all this is possible and already supported in mainline U-Boot starting from version 2021.07. That’s what this article is about.

Accessing cape information

Each cape has to contain an I2C EEPROM describing itself, according to the Cape EEPROM Contents specification.

To identify which capes are plugged in, all you have to do is read the connected EEPROMs. You can test by yourself by booting a BeagleBone with a Debian image, and dumping the EEPROM contents as in the following example:

hexdump -C /sys/bus/i2c/devices/2-0054/eeprom 
00000000  aa 55 33 ee 41 31 52 65  6c 61 79 20 43 61 70 65  |.U3.A1Relay Cape|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 30 30  41 32 42 65 61 67 6c 65  |......00A2Beagle|
00000030  42 6f 61 72 64 2e 6f 72  67 00 42 42 4f 52 47 5f  |Board.org.BBORG_|
00000040  52 45 4c 41 59 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 47 48 49 31  |RELAY.......GHI1|
00000050  38 32 37 30 34 37 32 00  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |8270472.........|
00000060  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |................|
*
...

Of course, the above kind of command only works if the corresponding Device Tree Overlays are loaded. Otherwise, the Linux kernel won’t know that the I2C EEPROMs are available.

The U-Boot extension manager

In the latest Debian images proposed by BeagleBoard.org at the time of this writing, there is already a mechanism to detect the plugged capes based on the information on their I2C EEPROM. However, that was a custom mechanism, and BeagleBoard.org contracted Bootlin to implement a more generic mechanism in the official version of U-Boot.

This generic mechanism was implemented by my colleague Köry Maincent and added to U-Boot (since version 2021.07) by this commit.

Let’s test this mechanism by building and booting our own image. The following instructions apply to the BeagleBone Black board.

SD card preparation

Using cfdisk or a similar tool, prepare a micro-SD card with at least one partition which you mark as “Bootable”. Then format it with the FAT32 filesystem:

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n boot /dev/mmcblk0p1

Now, remove and plug the micro-SD card back in again. It should automatically be mounted on /media/$USER/boot.

Compiling U-Boot

We first need to install a cross-compiling toolchain if you don’t have one yet. Here’s how to do this on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf-

Now, let’s use the latest version of U-Boot at the time of this writing.

git clone git://git.denx.de/u-boot.git
cd u-boot
git checkout v2022.04
make am335x_evm_defconfig
make menuconfig

In the configuration interface, add the new extension command by setting CONFIG_CMD_EXTENSION=y. You can then compile U-Boot:

make
cp MLO u-boot.img /media/mike/boot

Compiling Linux and Device Tree Overlays

Now, let’s compile the latest 5.10 Linux kernel supported by BeagleBoard.org.

First, download the root filesystem (generated by Buildroot, with this configuration file) which we will include in the Linux kernel as an initramfs.

Then, let’s get the kernel sources and configure them:

git clone https://github.com/beagleboard/linux.git
cd linux
git checkout 5.10.100-ti-r40
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf-
export ARCH=arm
make omap2plus_defconfig
make menuconfig

In the configuration interface, enable compiling the Device Tree Overlays with CONFIG_OF_OVERLAY=y. Also set CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE="../rootfs.cpio". You can now compile the kernel and the Device Trees, and deploy them to the micro-SD card:

make
cp arch/arm/boot/zImage /media/$USER/boot/
cp arch/arm/boot/dts/am335x-boneblack.dtb /media/$USER/boot/
mkdir /media/$USER/boot/overlays
cp arch/arm/boot/dts/overlays/*.dtbo /media/$USER/boot/overlays/
sudo umount /media/$USER/boot

Configuring U-Boot and using the “extension” command

Now insert the micro-SD card in the BeagleBone Black. Connect the capes that you own. Then power on the board while holding the USR button (close to the USB host port).

On the serial line, you should see U-Boot 2022.04 starting. Interrupt the countdown by pressing any key, to access the U-Boot prompt:

U-Boot SPL 2022.04 (Apr 06 2022 - 15:04:53 +0200)
Trying to boot from MMC1


U-Boot 2022.04 (Apr 06 2022 - 15:04:53 +0200)

CPU  : AM335X-GP rev 2.1
Model: TI AM335x BeagleBone Black
DRAM:  512 MiB
Core:  150 devices, 14 uclasses, devicetree: separate
WDT:   Started wdt@44e35000 with servicing (60s timeout)
NAND:  0 MiB
MMC:   OMAP SD/MMC: 0, OMAP SD/MMC: 1
Loading Environment from FAT... Unable to read "uboot.env" from mmc0:1... 
 not set. Validating first E-fuse MAC
Net:   eth2: ethernet@4a100000, eth3: usb_ether
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0 
=> 

Let’s try the extension manager now. First, we load the kernel image and Device Tree Binary (DTB) for the board:

=> fatload mmc 0:1 0x81000000 zImage
6219488 bytes read in 408 ms (14.5 MiB/s)
=> fatload mmc 0:1 0x82000000 am335x-boneblack.dtb
64939 bytes read in 10 ms (6.2 MiB/s)

Then, we set the RAM address where each Device Tree Overlay will be loaded:

=> setenv extension_overlay_addr 0x88080000

And define the command to load the overlays:

setenv extension_overlay_cmd 'echo loading ${extension_overlay_name}; fatload mmc 0:1 ${extension_overlay_addr} overlays/${extension_overlay_name}'
saveenv

Then, let U-Boot know where the DTB was loaded:

fdt addr 0x82000000

You can then scan for extension boards:

=> extension scan
BeagleBone Cape: Relay Cape (0x54)
BeagleBone Cape: BB-CAPE-DISP-CT43 (0x55)
BeagleBone Cape: Industrial Comms Cape (0x56)
Found 3 extension board(s).

Optionally, you can get a full listing after extension scan:

=> extension list
Extension 0: Relay Cape
	Manufacturer: 		BeagleBoard.org
	Version: 		00A2
	Devicetree overlay: 	BBORG_RELAY-00A2.dtbo
	Other information: 	
Extension 1: BB-CAPE-DISP-CT43
	Manufacturer: 		Embest
	Version: 		00A0
	Devicetree overlay: 	BB-CAPE-DISP-CT4-00A0.dtbo
	Other information: 	
Extension 2: Industrial Comms Cape
	Manufacturer: 		BeagleBoard.org
	Version: 		00A2
	Devicetree overlay: 	BBORG_COMMS-00A2.dtbo
	Other information: 	

Taking the relay cape as an example, you can see that the name of the Device Tree overlay was derived from the description in its EEPROM, which we dumped earlier.

Now, everything’s ready to load the overlay for the first cape (number 0):

=> extension apply 0                                                                                                                                  
loading BBORG_RELAY-00A2.dtbo
1716 bytes read in 5 ms (335 KiB/s)

Or for all capes:

=> extension apply all
loading BBORG_RELAY-00A2.dtbo
1716 bytes read in 5 ms (335 KiB/s)
loading BB-CAPE-DISP-CT4-00A0.dtbo
5372 bytes read in 5 ms (1 MiB/s)
loading BBORG_COMMS-00A2.dtbo
1492 bytes read in 4 ms (364.3 KiB/s)

We are now ready to set a generic command that will automatically load all the overlays for the supported capes, whatever they are, and then boot the Linux kernel:

setenv bootargs console==ttyS0,115200n8
setenv bootcmd 'fatload mmc 0:1 0x81000000 zImage; fatload mmc 0:1 0x82000000 am335x-boneblack.dtb; fdt addr 0x82000000; extension scan; extension apply all; bootz 0x81000000 - 0x82000000'
saveenv

Reboot your board and you should see:

6228224 bytes read in 526 ms (11.3 MiB/s)
93357 bytes read in 10 ms (8.9 MiB/s)
BeagleBone Cape: Relay Cape (0x54)
BeagleBone Cape: BB-CAPE-DISP-CT43 (0x55)
BeagleBone Cape: Industrial Comms Cape (0x56)
Found 3 extension board(s).
loading BBORG_RELAY-00A2.dtbo
1716 bytes read in 5 ms (335 KiB/s)
loading BB-CAPE-DISP-CT4-00A0.dtbo
5372 bytes read in 5 ms (1 MiB/s)
loading BBORG_COMMS-00A2.dtbo
1492 bytes read in 4 ms (364.3 KiB/s)
Kernel image @ 0x81000000 [ 0x000000 - 0x5f0900 ]
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 82000000
   Booting using the fdt blob at 0x82000000
   Loading Device Tree to 8ffe4000, end 8fffffff ... OK

Starting kernel ...

[    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0
[    0.000000] Linux version 5.10.100 (mike@mike-laptop) (arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc (Ubuntu 9.4.0-1ubuntu1~20.04.1) 9.4.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Ubuntu) 2.34) #8 SMP Wed Apr 6 16:25:24 CEST 2022
...

To double check that the overlays were taken into account, you can log in a the root user (no password) and type this command:

# ls  /proc/device-tree/chosen/overlays/
BB-CAPE-DISP-CT4-00A0.kernel  BBORG_RELAY-00A2.kernel
BBORG_COMMS-00A2.kernel       name

Note: all the files used here, including the resulting U-Boot environment file, are available in this archive. All you have to do is extract the archive in a FAT partition with the bootable flag, and then you’ll be ready to boot your board with it, without any manipulation to perform in U-Boot.

How to add support for a new board

To prove that the new extension board manager in U-Boot was generic, Köry Maincent used it to support three different types of boards:

• BeagleBone boards based on the AM3358 SoC from TI
• The BeagleBone AI board, based on the AM5729 SoC from TI
• The CHIP computer, based on the Allwinner R8 CPU, and its DIP extension boards.

To support a new board and its extension boards, the main thing to implement is the extension_board_scan() function for your board.

A good example to check is this commit from Köry which introduced cape detection capabilities for the TI CPUs and this second commit that enabled the mechanism on AM57xx (BeagleBone AI). A good ideas is also to check the latest version of board/ti/common/cape_detect.c in U-Boot’s sources.

Summary

The U-Boot Extension Board Manager is a feature in U-Boot which allows to automatically detect extension boards, provided the hardware makes such a detection possible, and automatically load and apply the corresponding Device Tree overlays. It was contributed by Köry Maincent from Bootlin, thanks to funding from BeagleBoard.org.

At the time of this writing, this functionality is supported on the BeagleBone boards (AM335x and AM57xx), on the CHIP computer (Allwinner R8), and since more recently, on Compulab’s IOT-GATE-iMX8 gateways.

With the combination of this blog post and the former two (see the links at the beginning), it should be clear how a specification can be written to use a combination of Device Tree symbols, Udev rules and extension board identifiers to make expansion header hardware “just work” when plugged in to various boards with compatible headers. BeagleBoard.org would be proud if our example inspired other community board maintainers.

References

• BeagleBoard.org blog post: Using Device Tree Overlays, example on BeagleBone boards
• Live Embedded Event conference presentation: Device Tree overlays and U-boot extension board management (video)

Bootlin would like to thank BeagleBoard.org for funding the development and deployment of this infrastructure in mainline U-Boot, and the creation of these three blog posts on Device Tree overlays.

This article is also available on the BeagleBoard.org blog.

Most of the BeagleBone boards from BeagleBoard.org share the same form factor, have the same headers and therefore can accept the same extension boards, also known as capes in the BeagleBoard world.

Of course, a careful PCB design was necessary to make this possible.

This must have been relatively easy with the early models (BeagleBone Black, Black Wireless, Green, Green Wireless, Black Industrial and Enhanced) which are based on the same Sitara AM3358 System on Chip (SoC) from Texas Instruments. However, the more recent creation of the BeagleBone AI board and keeping compatibility with existing capes must have been a little more complicated, as this board is based on a completely different SoC from Texas Instruments, the Sitara AM5729.

Once the PCB design challenge was completed, the BeagleBoard.org crew set itself another challenge: implement software that supports each BeagleBone cape in the same way, whatever the board, in particular:

• To have unique identifiers for devices in Linux, so that there is a stable name for Linux devices, even if at the hardware level they are connected differently, depending on whether the base board has a Sitara AM3358 and Sitara AM5729 SoC.
• To have DT overlays for capes that are applicable to all base boards, even if peripherals are connected to different buses of the SoCs.

This article will explore the software solutions implemented by BeagleBoard.org. Their ideas can of course be reused by other projects with similar needs.

The need for a cape standard

A good summary can be found on Deepak Khatri’s Google Summer of Code 2020 page:

The idea of this project was to make the same user space examples work with both BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone AI, using the same references to drivers for peripherals assigned to the same pins between BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone AI. Also, Same DT overlays should work (whenever possible) for both BBB and BBAI, with updated U-Boot cape manager DT overlays will be automatically loaded during boot.

Software setup

The below instructions are for people owning the BeagleBone AI board and any other BeagleBone board, and interested in exploring the devices on their boards by themselves.

First, get the latest console images from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images:

• For BeagleBone AI: AM5729 Debian 10.3 2020-04-06 1GB SD console
• For other BeagleBone boards: AM3358 Debian 10.3 2020-04-06 1GB SD console

Uncompress each image, insert a micro-SD card in the card read in your PC, and then flash the corresponding card. Here are example commands, assuming that the micro-SD card is represented by the /dev/mmcblk0 device:

unxz bone-debian-10.3-console-armhf-2020-04-06-1gb.img.xz
sudo dd if=bone-debian-10.3-console-armhf-2020-04-06-1gb.img.xz of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress

Connect the serial line of each board to your computer and then boot each board with it:

• For BeagleBone AI: its sufficient to have the micro-SD card inserted.
• On other BeagleBone boards, you may need to hold a button when you power up the board, to make it boot from the micro-SD card instead of from the internal eMMC. On the BeagleBone Black boards, for examples, that’s the USER button next to the USB host port. Note that you won’t need to do this again when you reset the board. The board will continue to boot from the external micro-SD card until it’s powered off.

You can connect with the default user, or connect as user root with password root.

Then, connect each board to the Internet, and get the latest package updates:

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

It’s then time to upgrade the kernel to the latest version supported by BeagleBoard. To do so, you’ll have to manually update the /opt/scripts/tools/update_kernel.sh file. In this file, go to the # parse commandline options section and add the below lines:

        --lts-5_10-kernel|--lts-5_10)
                kernel="LTS510"
                ;;

You can can then upgrade to the latest 5.10 kernel:

sudo /opt/scripts/tools/update_kernel.sh --ti-channel --lts-5_10

Reboot your board and with the uname -r command, check that you are now running Linux 5.10.

Unifying hardware on AM5729 and AM3358

Let’s start by comparing I2C buses.

Available I2C buses

The BeagleBone 101 document has the original P9 and P8 headers specification for I2C for the BeagleBone Black:

This is confirmed by the BeagleBone Black System Reference Manual. Now, let’s check the BeagleBone AI Reference Manual, which confirms that I2C buses are available at the same P9 connector pins:

BeagleBone Black	BeagleBone AI	SCL	SDA
I2C1	I2C5	P9_17	P9_18
I2C2	I2C4	P9_19	P9_20
I2C2	N/A	P9_21	P9_22
I2C1	I2C3	P9_24	P9_26

Note that on the BeagleBone Black, I2C1 and I2C2 are available at two different locations.

So, for both types of boards, we have at least I2C buses on P9_17/18, P9_19/20 and P9_24/26. However, that’s complicated because these pins don’t correspond to the same I2C buses. Therefore, users have to know that P9_19/20 correspond to I2C2 on BeagleBone Black and to I2C4 on BeagleBone AI.

The devices in /dev/ reflect such differences.

Here’s what we have on the BeagleBone AI:

root@beaglebone:~# ls -la /dev/i2c-*
crw------- 1 root root 89, 0 Mar 23 15:00 /dev/i2c-0
crw------- 1 root root 89, 3 Mar 23 15:00 /dev/i2c-3

Note that here with the AM5729 SoC, the first I2C bus is I2C1. Hence, /dev/i2c-0 corresponds to I2C1 (which is another I2C bus available on the SoC but not available through the cape headers) and /dev/i2c-3 corresponds to I2C4. Also note that I2C5 is not exposed in the default configuration that we have here, most probably because the corresponding header pins are used for other purposes.

And now let’s look at what we have on the BeagleBone Black:

root@beaglebone:~# ls -la /dev/i2c-*
crw------- 1 root root 89, 0 Mar 23 16:16 /dev/i2c-0
crw------- 1 root root 89, 1 Mar 23 16:17 /dev/i2c-1
crw------- 1 root root 89, 2 Mar 23 16:17 /dev/i2c-2

Here with the AM3358 SoC, /dev/i2c-0 corresponds to I2C0, /dev/ic2-1 to I2C1 and /dev/ic2-2 to I2C2.

So, on a running system, how to know which I2C bus device corresponds to the P9_19/20 header pins?

Unified access to I2C pins

The I2C section of the BeagleBone Cape Interface Specification, attempts to define equivalent /dev/bone/i2c/[i] bus device symbolic links across the supported CPUs, which correspond to the same cape header pins.

Such symbolic links are specified through the Device Tree description of such buses.

First, let’s have a look at the Device Tree for the BeagleBone AI (arch/arm/boot/dts/am5729-beagleboneai.dts):

&i2c4 {
	status = "okay";
	clock-frequency = <100000>;
	symlink = "bone/i2c/2";
};

Let’s have a look at the corresponding Device Tree for the AM3358 based BeagleBone boards: (arch/arm/boot/dts/am335x-bone-common-univ.dtsi):

&i2c2 {
	status = "okay";
	pinctrl-names = "default";
	pinctrl-0 = <>;

	clock-frequency = <100000>;
	symlink = "bone/i2c/2";
};

You can see that both devices, though they correspond to different devices, share the same symlink property, which is used to create a symbolic link in /dev/bone/i2c/ to the actual bus device file.

Let’s see such symbolic links on the BeagleBone AI:

root@beaglebone:~# ls -la /dev/bone/i2c/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Jan  1  2000 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 80 Jan  1  2000 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 23 15:00 0 -> ../../i2c-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 23 15:00 2 -> ../../i2c-3

And on the BeagleBone Black:

root@beaglebone:~# ls -la /dev/bone/i2c/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 100 Mar 23 16:16 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 100 Mar 23 16:16 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  11 Mar 23 16:16 0 -> ../../i2c-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  11 Mar 23 16:17 1 -> ../../i2c-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  11 Mar 23 16:17 2 -> ../../i2c-2

You can see that at least /dev/bone/i2c/0 and /dev/bone/i2c/2 are shared between both types of boards. Userspace code examples can then support different boards by referring to such device file links, for example by using the I2C tools commands.

The symbolic links are created from the Device Tree sources not by the Linux kernel, but by the udev device manager, thanks to the following rule found in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-of-symlink.rules in the BeagleBoard Debian distribution:

# allow declaring a symlink for a device in DT

ATTR{device/of_node/symlink}!="", \
        ENV{OF_SYMLINK}="%s{device/of_node/symlink}"

ENV{OF_SYMLINK}!="", ENV{DEVNAME}!="", \
        SYMLINK+="%E{OF_SYMLINK}", \
        TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_ALIAS}+="/dev/%E{OF_SYMLINK}"

Accessing other devices

Other devices are available in the same way through symbolic links in /dev/bone/, for example UART (serial port) devices.

Let’s check on the BeagleBone AI (run sudo apt install tree first):

root@beaglebone:~# tree /dev/bone/
/dev/bone/
├── i2c
│   ├── 0 -> ../../i2c-0
│   └── 2 -> ../../i2c-3
└── uart
    └── 0 -> ../../ttyS0

2 directories, 3 files

On the BeagleBone Black:

root@beaglebone:~# tree /dev/bone/
/dev/bone/
├── i2c
│   ├── 0 -> ../../i2c-0
│   ├── 1 -> ../../i2c-1
│   └── 2 -> ../../i2c-2
├── spi
│   ├── 0.0 -> ../../spidev0.0
│   ├── 0.1 -> ../../spidev0.1
│   ├── 1.0 -> ../../spidev1.0
│   └── 1.1 -> ../../spidev1.1
└── uart
    ├── 0 -> ../../ttyS0
    ├── 1 -> ../../ttyS1
    ├── 2 -> ../../ttyS2
    ├── 3 -> ../../ttyS3
    ├── 4 -> ../../ttyS4
    └── 5 -> ../../ttyS5

3 directories, 13 files

Accessing header pins

Another challenge is with userspace software examples directly refer to header pins by their names. Here is a BoneScript push button demo, for example:

var b = require('bonescript');
b.pinMode('P8_19', b.INPUT);
b.pinMode('P8_13', b.OUTPUT);
setInterval(check,100);

function check(){
b.digitalRead('P8_19', checkButton);
}

function checkButton(x) {
  if(x.value == 1){
    b.digitalWrite('P8_13', b.HIGH);
  }
  else{
    b.digitalWrite('P8_13', b.LOW);
  }
}                

For AM3358 BeagleBone boards, the am335x-bone-common-univ.dtsi file already associates the P8_19 name to a specific GPIO:

P8_19 {
	gpio-name = "P8_19";
	gpio = <&gpio0 22 0>;
	input;
	dir-changeable;
};

Such definitions are processed by the drivers/gpio/gpio-of-helper.c driver.

However, this driver is specific to the BeagleBoard.org kernel, and the Device Tree for Beagle Bone AI doesn’t use it yet, so this aspect is still work in progress. The main goal remains though: define generic names for header pins, which map to specific GPIOs on different boards.

Universal Device Tree Overlays for Capes

Another challenge is to implement Device Tree Overlays for BeagleBone capes.

The goal as stated in the beginning is to use the same Device Tree overlays on both types of SoCs. While as of today it doesn’t seem possible to generate compiled Device Tree Overlays (DTBO) which would support both SoCs at the same time, the BeagleBoard.org engineers have come up with a solution to achieve this at source level. This means that, for each cape to support, the Device Tree Overlay binaries for the supported SoCs can be produced from a unique source file.

While this hasn’t been deployed yet in the 5.10 BeagleBoard kernel, such source code is already available in Deepak Khatri’s own tree.

For example this CAN1 overlay (BONE-CAN1.dts):

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2020 Deepak Khatri 
 *
 * Virtual cape for /dev/bone/can/1
 *
 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
 * published by the Free Software Foundation.
 */

/dts-v1/;
/plugin/;

/*
* Helper to show loaded overlays under: /proc/device-tree/chosen/overlays/
*/
&{/chosen} {
    overlays {
        BONE-CAN1 = __TIMESTAMP__;
    };
};

/*
 * Update the default pinmux of the pins.
 * See these files for the phandles (&P9_* & &P8_*)
 * https://github.com/lorforlinux/BeagleBoard-DeviceTrees/blob/compatibility/src/arm/am335x-bone-common-univ.dtsi
 * https://github.com/lorforlinux/BeagleBoard-DeviceTrees/blob/compatibility/src/arm/am572x-bone-common-univ.dtsi
 */
&ocp {
    P9_24_pinmux { pinctrl-0 = <&P9_24_can_pin>;};  /* can rx */
    P9_26_pinmux { pinctrl-0 = <&P9_26_can_pin>;};  /* can tx */
};

/*
 * See these files for the phandles (&bone_*) and other bone bus nodes
 * https://github.com/lorforlinux/BeagleBoard-DeviceTrees/blob/compatibility/src/arm/bbai-bone-buses.dtsi
 * https://github.com/lorforlinux/BeagleBoard-DeviceTrees/blob/compatibility/src/arm/bbb-bone-buses.dtsi
 */
&bone_can_1 {
    status = "okay";
};

The &ocp code applies the pin muxing definitions for CAN on P9_24 (&P9_24_can_pin) and P9_26 (&P9_26_can_pin), which of course are different on AM3358 and AM5729.

Here are these definitions for AM3358 (am335x-bone-common-univ.dtsi):

P9_24_can_pin: pinmux_P9_24_can_pin { pinctrl-single,pins = <
       AM33XX_IOPAD(0x0984, PIN_INPUT_PULLUP | MUX_MODE2) >; };		/* uart1_txd.dcan1_rx */
...
P9_26_can_pin: pinmux_P9_26_can_pin { pinctrl-single,pins = <
       AM33XX_IOPAD(0x0980, PIN_OUTPUT_PULLUP | MUX_MODE2) >; };	/* uart1_rxd.dcan1_tx */

And those for AM5729 (am572x-bone-common-univ.dtsi):

P9_24_can_pin: pinmux_P9_24_can_pin { pinctrl-single,pins = <
        DRA7XX_CORE_IOPAD(0x368C, PIN_INPUT_PULLUP | MUX_MODE2) >; };	/* gpio6_15.dcan2_rx  */
...
P9_26_can_pin: pinmux_P9_26_can_pin { pinctrl-single,pins = <
	DRA7XX_CORE_IOPAD(0x3688, PIN_OUTPUT_PULLUP | MUX_MODE2) >; };	/* gpio6_14.dcan2_tx */

You can see that using a generic Device Tree phandle (&ref), you can use a definition which value depends on the Device Tree includes for each board.

The same idea was applied in enabling (status = "okay";) the CAN1 bus (&bone_can_1).

On AM3358, it is defined as (bbb-bone-buses.dtsi):

bone_can_1: &dcan1 {

};

And on AM5729, its definition is (bbai-bone-buses.dtsi):

bone_can_1: &dcan2 {

};

Conclusion

By adding a symlink property to the Device Tree sources, BeagleBoard.org has made it possible to make userspace code, in particular its code examples, support all the BeagleBone boards at the same time, even though the devices they drive have are numbered differently on different SoCs.

Such a technique may be reused by other projects interested in running the same software on boards based on different SoCs.

As far as GPIOs are concerned, the drivers/gpio/gpio-of-helper.c driver is specific to the BeagleBoard.org kernel and is unlikely to be accepted in the mainline kernel in its current state. However, there are other solutions, supported by the mainline kernel, to associate names to GPIOs and then to look up such GPIOs by name through libgpiod.

Last but not least, it’s possible to use the same Device Tree Overlay source code to support an extension board on similar boards, just by using common definitions having different values on each different platform. Any project can reuse this idea, which just uses standard Device Tree syntax.

References

• Video: Intro: Cape Compatibility layer for BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone AI (Deepak Khatri)
• BeagleBone cape interface spec (elinux.org)
• Cape Compatibility Layer for BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone AI (Deepak Khatri)
• Using Device Tree Overlays, example on BeagleBone Cape add-on boards (BeagleBoard.org blog)

Bootlin thanks BeagleBoard.org for funding the creation of this blog post. Note that another post is coming in the next weeks, about the extension board manager we added to U-Boot thanks to funding from BeagleBoard.org.

The entire team at Bootlin is extremely happy to welcome Luca Ceresoli, who started working with us on March 1, 2022. Based in Italy, Luca is the first employee of Bootlin based outside of France, and we plan to continue to expand our hiring in a similar way in the future.

Luca brings a vast amount of embedded and embedded Linux expertise to the Bootlin team. Luca has been working on embedded products since 2002, and embedded Linux products since 2008. He has helped design, develop and ship products based on a large number of embedded processors, developing complete BSPs, developing Linux kernel drivers, integrating complete systems using Buildroot or Yocto. Luca has also contributed to the Linux kernel, Buildroot, and several open-source projects, and has spoken several times at FOSDEM, the Embedded Linux Conference, and other events.

Luca’s arrival at Bootlin not only means that we have more capacity to help our customers with their embedded Linux projects, but also that we have more capacity to deliver training courses, and a new ability to deliver some of our training courses in Italian.

Once again, welcome on board Luca!