Running BOSP on a ZedBoard -- Test Application stalls

[Martin Bornhold]

Hi BOSP-Team,

i am working at OFFIS e.V. in Germany, it’s one of the Contrex project partners. I am trying to run BOSP on a ZedBoard (http://zedboard.org/product/zedboard). It’s a development board featuring a Xilinx Zynq-7000 system on a chip with an ARMv7 dual core Cortex-A9 processor. I followed your How-To for compilation and installation and it finishes without an error. But when i try to start the test application with the command „bbque-testapp“ the application stalls after some console output. I don’t have a clue why this error occurs and can’t find any hints in the console and log output what causes this error. Maybe someone can help me to find a solution for this problem by answering some of my questions below. I added all relevant log files i found, if you need more information just tell me what you need and where i can find it.

1. Does anyone encountered this error before and has a solution for it?
   
2. Is my BOSP configuration valid or can it be the cause for this problem? I only modified the file /opt/bosp/etc/bbque/pil/default.bpl to meet the dual core processor setting, see attached file.
   
3. Is this an error in the BOSP framework or is it only an error in the test application that can be ignored for further usage of the BOSP framework? When it’s only an error in the test application, is there another way to test my BOSP installation?
   
4. Does anyone has a clue where to start searching for the cause of this problem?

Additional information:

• During deployment i had to manually create the folders „/opt/bosp/var/bbque“, „/opt/bosp/var/run“ and „/opt/bosp/var/lock“ to get the BOSP-Daemon starting.
  
• I am using the linux kernel from Xilinx Inc, the vendor of the Xilinx-Zynq-7000 system on a chip. (https://github.com/Xilinx/linux-xlnx)
  
• The Xilinx linux kernel is based on version 3.8.0 (git-tag: xilinx-v14.5.01).
  
• All CGroup related kernel options are activated.
  
• I extended the BOSP makefiles to use the same compiler toolchain as for the linux kernel compilation. The compiler version string says: „arm-buildroot-linux-gnueabi-gcc (Buildroot 2015.02-g9eca37b) 4.8.4“

Thanks and best regards,

Martin Bornhold

[Giuseppe Massari]

Hi Martin,

Your setup seems OK.
The BarbequeRTRM seems running correctly until it accesses the Linux
Control Groups...

Can you set the logger level to Debug, by editing the
BOSP/out/etc/bbque/bbque.conf file as follows:

################################################################################
# Log4CPP Logger Configuration
################################################################################
[log4cpp]
###
# Set root category priority and its appender
# By default all logs are only from level greater than or equal to INFO
###
rootCategory = DEBUG, raFile
#rootCategory = ERROR, raConsole
#rootCategory = ERROR, raSyslog
#rootCategory = ERROR, raRSyslog
###
# Uncomment each of the following lines for subsystems you want
# to redefine the category priority to a value diffent from that of
# the rootCategory
###
#category.bq = INFO
...


Then, clear the old BOSP/var/bbque.log, try again and send me the new
'bbque.log' generated.

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "BOSP Development" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to bosp-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
Giuseppe Massari

Twitter
Google+
Facebook
Skype: massanga999

[Martin Bornhold]

Hi Giuseppe,

thank you for your fast response!

As you suggested i set the log level to debug in bbque.conf. Additionally i modified rtlib.conf and rtlib_testapp.conf to set the log level to debug and changed the logging appender from console to file. This results in much more logging, as expected. But i still have no idea what the reason for the problem is. I hope you can find out more than me.

The resulting log files are attached to this post, the new apps.log file results from the settings in rtlib_testapp.conf (file endings changed to .txt to enable the web view).

Thanks,

Martin Bornhold

[Giuseppe Massari]

Hi Martin,

I think this is the same problem we already experienced on some
development boards.
Basically, something is going wrong wrong in the Linux Control Group
"Memory controller".

In the next release (before the end of the year), we added a
configuration option to disable memory controller.
I think you can move to the "development branch", in order to exploit it:

[BOSP] $ ./bosp update-devel

[BOSP] $ make menuconfig

Barbeque --> Platform Setup --> Linux Control Groups --> [ ] Memory controller


Let me know if this fix the problem.

Regards


2015-11-16 15:44 GMT+01:00 Martin Bornhold <martin....@gmail.com>:
> Hi Giuseppe,

[Martin Bornhold]

Hi Giuseppe

I finally found some time to test your suggestion and it works like a charm! The bbque-testapp starts executing, prints some log messages and finished with a cumulative execution statistic. I added the BOSP-Shell output for the sake of completeness.

Can you give me a short explanation about the impact of disabling the memory controller?

Just for your information:

During the compilation of the development branch i got the following error message. I fixed it by copying the file "BOSP/barbeque/config/pil/omap_4460.bpl".

CMake Error at bbque/cmake_install.cmake:92 (FILE):
  file INSTALL cannot find
  "BOSP/barbeque/config/pil/omap_4470.bpl".

Thank your very much for your help!

Best regards, Martin

[Giuseppe Massari]

2015-11-23 12:53 GMT+01:00 Martin Bornhold <martin....@gmail.com>:
> Hi Giuseppe

>
> I finally found some time to test your suggestion and it works like a charm!
> The bbque-testapp starts executing, prints some log messages and finished
> with a cumulative execution statistic. I added the BOSP-Shell output for the
> sake of completeness.

Great.

>
> Can you give me a short explanation about the impact of disabling the memory
> controller?

The memory controller performs an hard control of the memory used by
the application. This means that you can specify a threshold (amount
of bytes), and if the memory used application overpass such a
threshold, the application is killed by Linux memory manager. By
disabling it, you simply disable this "brutal" control.

>
> Just for your information:
> During the compilation of the development branch i got the following error
> message. I fixed it by copying the file
> "BOSP/barbeque/config/pil/omap_4460.bpl".
> CMake Error at bbque/cmake_install.cmake:92 (FILE):
> file INSTALL cannot find
> "BOSP/barbeque/config/pil/omap_4470.bpl".

Thanks for the report, I will investigate on and fix this.