Solo: Compiling

[nickray]

I started work on compiling the firmware on Linux, documented in https://solo.solokeys.io/building.

We need a dual Win/Linux compilation story (plus, the firmware gets stuck on the Nucleo 😜).

[nickray]

And shouldn't we include debug symbols? AFAIK they don't increase size in flash.

[Immortalin]

Why don't they increase size?

[nickray]

Why don't they increase size?

There's no use for them on the MCU (only on the host where GDB runs), so they don't get loaded. I can't seem to find a good reference for this - we should probably collect some "basics of embedded gdb/openocd flashing+debugging" somewhere. But you can for instance compare arm-none-eabi-size /path/to/your.elf --format=SysV with the output of load in gdb when flashing an ELF containing debug_info.

[szszszsz]

Hi @nickray! You have mentioned in https://github.com/SoloKeysSec/solo/issues/19#issue-372157989, that firmware got stuck in your case. Could you elaborate?

[nickray]

I am afraid I don't remember. Word of warning though, Linux builds currently don't work properly (they build, but flashing them has issues), only Windows ones. I am hoping @conorpp comes up with a fix for that soon!

[nickray]

Do you have a specific issue @szszszsz?

[szszszsz]

@nickray I was trying then to run the firmware on Nucleo board, and could not identify the problem. It was fixed 2 days ago by @conorpp, thank you!

Now I hope to connect to its serial port, and look inside. Have you tested this under Linux? Or do you work only on Windows with it?

[yparitcher]

i have successfully built and flashed the firmware on Linux / Ubuntu

[conorpp]

Serial port works fine on Linux but I had some problems at first. Since it looks like a modem, the linux daemon ModemManager will automatically start messing with it. I had to disable it:

systemctl stop ModemManager 

Might be something that can be changed in the USB descriptors to prevent this from happening, opening #62 for it

[szszszsz]

@conorpp It looks like that was the cause in my case as well (Fedora 29, Gnome 3) - I have disabled that service entirely. Thank you for the tip! Works as advertised now.

[yparitcher]

Serial port works fine on Linux but I had some problems at first. Since it looks like a modem, the linux daemon ModemManager will automatically start messing with it. I had to disable it:

systemctl stop ModemManager 

Might be something that can be changed in the USB descriptors to prevent this from happening, opening #62 for it

there is no need to disable ModemManager, just add the folowing to your udev rules and ModemManager will ignore it. (taken from ModemManager docs)

ACTION!="add|change|move", GOTO="mm_usb_device_blacklist_end"
SUBSYSTEM!="usb", GOTO="mm_usb_device_blacklist_end"
ENV{DEVTYPE}!="usb_device",  GOTO="mm_usb_device_blacklist_end"

ATTRS{idVendor}=="0483", ATTRS{idProduct}=="a2ca", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

LABEL="mm_usb_device_blacklist_end"

[nickray]

Why don't they increase size?

A "kind of" reference: https://mcuoneclipse.com/2012/06/01/debug-vs-release/