Monthly Archives: January 2011

Ubuntu on PandaBoard

·
My PandaBoard

My PandaBoard

My PandaBoard still has not yet arrived, but I was able to get a loaner to explore buffers in PulseAudio.  Since it is not mine, I have not mounted it on it’s own fancy custom mounting base platform (cardboard) like I did with my BeagleBoard.  But, the Panda arrives with it’s own fancy little rubber feet that work fine as standoffs. Here’s what it looks like all hooked up.

Once I figured out where to get an Ubuntu image for it, it was pretty easy to get it up and running.  All you have to do is go to the website below and follow the instructions. You will get the Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 image and then write the raw image to a SD card. Simple.

Follow the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/OMAPMaverickInstall

I did have lots of trouble getting the ubuntu-omap4-extras installed. I could never get the graphical method to work properly, but I did follow the comand line method further down the page on the website listed below and finally got it to install.

Follow the command line installation instructions at: http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_Ubuntu_PPA

And finally, for help in many areas not covered here, if you have not already, read all you can at: http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Building PulseAudio

·

Here are (now improved) quick instructions to create a working build sandbox for PulseAudio development on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick on an i386 platform. I highly recommend reading all this post completely before starting this process.

Here are the steps to make PulseAudio that builds and works for Ubuntu:

  1. Install or update to Maverick and accept defaults, this process will probably work fine with other Ubuntu versions, so if you are not on Maverick, give it a try.
  2. Update all packages with Update Manager
  3. Install dpkg-dev -> sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev

If you are using source from git:

  1. Install git if you haven’t already -> sudo apt-get install git
  2. From your home directory, get the latest PulseAudio source -> git clone git://git.0pointer.de/pulseaudio.git
  3. Git will create the PulseAudio repository in a directory called pulseaudio, when the clone has completed, change to that directory -> cd ~/pulseaudio

If you are using Ubuntu maverick source:

  1. Install the source -> apt-get source pulseaudio

Configure and build the source:

  1. Install the prereq packages -> sudo apt-get build-dep pulseaudio
  2. To check the environment and set up the basics, run the bootstrap script -> ./bootstrap.sh
  3. Next, run configure -> ./configure
  4. Run make to build the executables

Note: the executables will be in the src directory. Change to that directory and run specifying that path so that you will not run the system programs. For example, to run pulseaudio with verbose log messages, cd to src and run -> ./pulseaudio -n -F ./default.pa -p ./.libs -vvvv

There are some very helpful hints at: http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/09/compiling-and-running-pulseaudio-from-git/ The steps on this page are slightly different for Ubuntu, but worth reading to better understand the process.  Also, this page does a really nice job of explaining how to run pulseaudio for test/debug.