For more information, you can read a related blog post on this topic
You can now simply do:
# (turn on full debian repo; turn on ssh)
# be root
sudo su
# update your packages
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
# get the main depian repo
echo deb ftp://ftp.dk.debian.org/debian/ sid main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid.list
apt-get update
# install the new hotness
apt-get install apt
apt-get install nodejs npm curl wget htop git rsync less screen
# remove so no mangled packages get installed
rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid.list
apt-get update
exitNode is awesome, Phidgets are awesome. Syngergy. All I wanted to do was tweet the temperature of my house automatically…
- A computer (or a virtual machine) running a full version of the Debian operating system
- I used Debian 6.0.3, 64bit
- A 1GB (or more) USB memory stick
- The phidgetsbc2 doesn't have enough ram to compile node, so we will be using this memory stick as swap space… which is likely to destroy the memory stick
- Internet connectivity for both your Debian computer and the Phidget board
The v8 stack simply won't compile on the fidget board. I think that it has to do with floating point precision, but I can't be sure. Either way, we are going to compile an ARM binary on our "big" Debian computer and copy it over:
Get codesourcery
SSH to your Debian machine, and su root
sudo mkdir /opt/codesourcery
cd /opt/codesourcery
wget http://www.codesourcery.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/package4571/public/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/arm-2009q1-203-arm-none-linux-gnueabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
tar -xvf arm-2009q1-203-arm-none-linux-gnueabi-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.bz2
Get Node and build it for the Phidget board
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.7/node-v0.6.7.tar.gz
tar -xvf node-v0.6.7.tar.gz
cd node-v0.6.7/deps/v8
export TOOL_PREFIX=/opt/codesourcery/arm-2009q1/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi
export CXX=$TOOL_PREFIX-g++
export AR=$TOOL_PREFIX-ar
export RANLIB=$TOOL_PREFIX-ranlib
export CC=$TOOL_PREFIX-gcc
export LD=$TOOL_PREFIX-ld
export CCFLAGS="-march=armv4 -mno-thumb-interwork"
OR>> export CCFLAGS="-march=armv4 -mno-thumb-interwork -mtune=xscale -mno-thumb -mfloat-abi=soft -mfpu=maverick"
export ARM_TARGET_LIB=/opt/codesourcery/arm-2009q1/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/libc
scons armeabi=soft wordsize=32 snapshot=off arch=arm library=shared mode=release
scons armeabi=soft wordsize=32 snapshot=off arch=arm library=shared mode=release sample=shell
Copy the entire v8 directory to the memory stick I was running Debian in a virtual machine on my OSX machine, so I rSync'ed it
rsync -avz root@{remote_host_ip}:/root/node-v0.6.7/deps/v8 /Volumes/{memory_stick}/node
New Firmware
- http://www.phidgets.com/drivers.php (USB Key needed)
- Copy to the USB stick and follow the instructions in the web console
Config (via web interface)
- turn on ssh { http://phidgetsbc.local./cgi-bin/network-settings.sh }
- Install C++ Develeper Headers { http://phidgetsbc.local./cgi-bin/system-packages.sh }
- Include full Debian Package Repository { http://phidgetsbc.local./cgi-bin/system-packages.sh }
Local Configuration (via SSH) on the Phidget board
ssh [email protected]
apt-get update
apt-get -u upgrade
apt-get install gcc wget python openssl make scons libssl-dev libax25 libfile-copy-recursive-perl openbsd-inetd tcpd update-inetd python-software-properties pkg-config htop git subversion
Plug in the USB drive. I kept the now-compiled V8 source in /node/v8 on the memory stick
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/bin
echo "/opt/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
ldconfig
mkdir /opt/share/v8
cp -a /media/{usb_stick_usb_path}/node/v8 /opt/share/.
echo "/opt/share/v8" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
ldconfig
##Add more RAM This is likely to destroy the memory stick after a lot of use (USB hates random I/O). Create a swap file and configure it (will take ~10 min)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/usb0/swapfile bs=1M count=256
mkswap /media/usb0/swapfile
swapon /media/usb0/swapfile
export JOBS=1
export CC='gcc -march=armv4 -mfloat-abi=soft'
export CCFLAGS='-march=armv4 -mfloat-abi=soft'
export CXX='g++ -march=armv4 -mfloat-abi=soft'
export GCC='-march=armv4 -mfloat-abi=soft'
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.7/node-v0.6.7.tar.gz
tar -xvf node-v0.6.7.tar.gz
rm node-v0.6.7.tar.gz
cd node-v0.6.7
./configure --shared-v8 --shared-v8-libpath=/opt/share/v8 --shared-v8-includes=/opt/share/v8/include --without-snapshot
## If the configuration isn't all green, something is wrong
make
make install
Note: For me, a few times various parts of the 35 steps make preforms will crash with a segmentation fault. I guess this has to do with ram? Make will resume where you left off last, so just run it again
curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
##Contributors to this guide:
We used this as a pointer to build v8 & then use shared v8 in nodejs on Arch Linux ARM. Thanks for this! (v8 scons via node's waf hates hardfloat ;) )