The Minix ARM port targets the BeagleBoard-xM and it's QEMU based emulator, the BeagleBone and the BeagleBone Black products from the BeagleBoard community. These are all based on system on chip designs from TI and all contain a Cortex-A8 ARM core.

The code is developed and integrated in the same (master) code branch as the official MINIX3 x86 port.

This is a preliminary list of what's supported and what isn't. Feel free to add anything important that was left off the list and/or update the list with the latest developments.

First do a checkout of the code

$ mkdir -p $HOME/minix
$ cd $HOME/minix
$ git clone git://git.minix3.org/minix src
$ cd src

Secondly configure your build by creating a .settings file.

For the BeagleBoard-xM use these settings:

# beagleboard-xm
U_BOOT_BIN_DIR=build/omap3_beagle/
CONSOLE=tty02

For the BeagleBone(s) use the following settings:

#beaglebone (and black)
U_BOOT_BIN_DIR=build/am335x_evm/
CONSOLE=tty00

Now launch the build by calling the image creation script (This will call the Crosscompiling with a machine set to “evbearm-el”):

$ ./releasetools/arm_sdimage.sh

The result is a file called minix_arm_sd.img in your src directory. This image can be copied onto an SD-Card using dd:

sudo dd if=minix_arm_sd.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M oflag=direct

WARNING Just make sure your file system did not mount the sd-card while you where dd'ing.

Once the sd-card is inserted on the !BeagleBoard-xM press the reset button and watch the serial for messages. Alternatively you can start the same image in the emulator (Read about that in minixonlinaroqemuarm). for information on network booting, see the Netbooting ARM article.

## Starting application at 0x80200000 ...
MINIX booting

MINIX 3.2.1. Copyright 2012, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
MINIX is open source software, see http://www.minix3.org
Started VFS: 8 worker thread(s)
starting mmc driver
mmc_block(info)Initializing the MMC block device
mmc_host_mmchs(info)Using instance number 0
mmc_block(info)System event framework fresh start
Root device name is /dev/c0d0p1s0
/dev/c0d0p1s0: clean
/dev/c0d0p1s0 is mounted on /
none is mounted on /proc
date: timed: no such device or address
Tue Jan  1 00:00:00 GMT 2013
/dev/c0d0p1s2: clean
/dev/c0d0p1s1: clean
size on /dev/imgrd set to 0kB
Multiuser startup in progress ...
Starting services: randomrm /dev/eth0
rm /dev/eth
mknod /dev/psip0 c 7 1
ln /dev/psip0 /dev/psip
mknod /dev/ip0 c 7 2
ln /dev/ip0 /dev/ip
mknod /dev/tcp0 c 7 3
ln /dev/tcp0 /dev/tcp
mknod /dev/udp0 c 7 4
ln /dev/udp0 /dev/udp
mknod /dev/ipstat c 7 0
inet: unable to read random data from /dev/random: resource temporarily unavailable
inet: using current time for random-number seed
 inet ipc.
Starting daemons: update cron syslogd.
Starting networking: nonamed.
Local packages (start):  done.
 Minix  Release 3 Version 2.1  (console)

10.0.0.1 login:

If you're using a BeagleBone or BeagleBone Black, there is an ethernet driver available. It's configured through /etc/inet.conf. Running netconf as usual will let you select the right driver, which is lan8710a.

To enable services like telnet/ftp/etc you can create an rc.daemons file.

mv /etc/rc.daemons.dist /etc/rc.daemons
vi /etc/rc.daemons

Restart the system for the changes to take effect.

reboot

• A video showing the above steps of obtaining and building the system is here.
• A video showing how to use gdb to debug a minix from a qemu is here.
• A video showing how to use Code Composer studio to debug the !BeagleBone White is here.

Great, that's what I wanted to hear! Help with documentation, making the above procedure more clean, hardware support, debugging, running the test set and finding and debugging problems! Check the resources page for more information on how to join the community.

See ARM-specific (or not ARM-specific!) points on the Wishlist page for the current list of todo's.