Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded training course – Online

Description

Type	Online
Mix	25% theory – 75% practical activities – Learn by doing!
Language	English
Max participants	8

Duration

24 hours (6 sessions of 4 hours)

Hardware	BeaglePlay board with TI Sitara AM625 SoC (ARM64)
Yocto Project version	5.0 (Scarthgap LTS) used in practical labs
Prerequisites	Familiarity with the Linux command line – understanding low-level details about Embedded Linux will help but isn’t a strict requirement.

Upcoming sessions

Trainer	Dates	Cost	Register
Michael Opdenacker	Sep. 2-5, 9-12, Online 15:00 to 19:00 UTC+2 Seats left	1,990 EUR 1, 2, 3

Also available on-line or through private sessions worldwide. Ask us for a quote.

¹ We want our training to be accessible to individuals around the world. If our standard rate is a barrier due to local income levels, please apply anyway — we’ll do our best to offer a suitable price.
² Individuals (all countries, not paying through a company) are subject to + 20% V.A.T. However, we offer a discount on the base cost to cancel the impact of V.A.T. and keep the same total price. See also ¹.
³ Only for French companies: + 20% V.A.T.

Available discounts

The below discounts can be combined, up to a limit of 400 EUR per participant.

• 200 EUR returning participant discount for any extra course taken by the same participant at most 12 months after another one.
• 200 EUR early bird discount for any registration at least 2 months before the session dates.
• 200 EUR extra participant discount for each participant from the same entity (same invoicing address) in addition to the first one.

If V.A.T. is applicable, it applies to the amounts before V.A.T.

Introduction

• Demo: Build an embedded Linux image for a different board (BeagleBone Black) and boot it.
• Learning techniques used in this course.
• Lab: environment setup.
• Introduction to embedded Linux — Differences with server / desktop systems.
• History of OpenEmbedded and the Yocto Project.
  Roles of the various components: OpenEmbedded, Poky, Yocto. Yocto releases.
• Lab: first build. Get the source code, configure it and build your first image for BeaglePlay.
• Learning from BitBake output: recipes and tasks, native recipes, versions and revisions, setscene tasks, shared state cache…
• Lab: First image boot. Prepare the board, flash the image (bmaptool), boot the board.

Getting Started

• Basic variable syntax and operations.
• Parsing and evaluation order.
• Checking variable values.
• Lab: basic BitBake variable operators.
• Lab: setting up networking — Host and board-site networking. Enabling a static IP address.
• Adding packages to an image
• Find recipes and layers providing them.
• oe-pkgdata-util script
• Lab: adding packages to an image
• Demo: documentation — Yocto Project manuals walk through.
• Lab: build image for an emulated ARM64 machine.

Recipes

• BitBake recipes. Recipe header fields, licensing information, source fetching.
• Lab: create your first recipe.
• Adding patches and other files.
• Defining packages.
• Dependency fields. Per recipe sysroots.
• Lab: create a recipe for the MyMan ASCII game
• Modifying recipes — bbappend mechanism.
• Lab: tweaking the Device Tree by overriding the standard U-Boot recipe.
• Virtual packages.
• Kernel recipes: linux-yocto, custom recipe with kernel.bbclass, SoC or board vendor recipe.
• Lab: switching to the mainline Linux kernel.
• Devtool: possibilities, workspace, typical workflows.
• Lab: Modify the MyMan recipe — Add joystick support to the code, compile and test changes directly, generate a patch.
• Variable overrides. Typical override issues.
• Lab: smarter kernel recipe, supporting multiple machines and configurations.
• Tasks details: fetch, configure, PACKAGECONFIG, compile, install, package_qa
• Techniques for debugging recipes

Layers

• BSP layers: U-Boot recipes, machine definitions, MACHINE_FEATURES.
• Lab: create a new machine — Eliminate settings in local.conf.
• Images: image recipes, standard images, useful variables, IMAGE_FEATURES, package groups.
• Building disk images
• Lab: create your own image — Move more settings from local.conf, add space to your partition.
• Distro layers — The poky distro, what makes it unsuitable for production.
• DISTRO_FEATURES, toolchain options, init manager, include files. Create your own distro.
• Lab: create your own distro: ditch Poky, switch to systemd, change login message…
• BSP vs Distro vs Image: what belongs where.

Yocto in Projects

• Binary distributions: package formats, add package-management to image, creating and using package feeds. Package PR value and PR server.
• Lab: Setting up a binary distribution. Build a new package and install it through an HTTP package feed.
• Addressing vulnerabilities: vulnerability checking, ignoring irrelevant vulnerabilities and applying patches to fix them.
• Lab: managing vulnerabilities. Reduce the vulnerability count, mark a vulnerability as ignored.
• Software Supply Chain — SBoM, SPDX, working with licenses
• Configuration management: Kas
• Lab: regenerate the whole lab project from a single Kas file.
• Yocto references: books, favorite manuals, other online resources, conferences and events. Getting involved.
• Lab: final challenge — Fix a broken multimedia player system with multiple types of bugs. When everything works, get codes to claim your completion certificate.

What’s special in our online courses

Real labs, not just demos: unlike in some other offerings, each participant has time to do the practical labs during the course hours, with support from the trainer. The number of participants is limited to 8 to make sure that the instructor has enough time to support everyone.

Daily slots are just 4 hours long, allowing to continue working on regular projects, and to finish the labs with support from the trainer. We provide a Matrix channel to get support outside official hours, and even after the course is over. The timing also allows for participants from North America.

Video recordings of the lectures from the trainer are provided. This can come in handy to review the details of a particular topic after the course. Note that these videos are for your own use only, and that participants won’t be recorded for privacy reasons.

Course never postponed: once you are registered to one of our public sessions (after we receive your payment), you are sure to participate at the expected dates. We don’t postpone sessions, even with a very small number of participants.

Majority of practical activities, representing at least 75% of learning time.

Short lectures only: sequences of theory never exceed 30 minutes, and are interleaved with quick or longer practice. Too long series of lectures are hard to digest, especially in an online setting.

Technical and teaching experience: courses taught by an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in embedded Linux and 30 years using and advocating for Free and Open Source Software.

See also: Why choose Root Commit courses?

Practical details

Registration

To register to one or several of our sessions (in-person or on-line), please use this contact form.

If you have more than 4 people to register, you may consider ordering an on-site, in-person training session. Just ask us.

Required hardware

PC running Linux

For this session, you will need a laptop computer running a native installation of Linux, with one of the distributions currently supported by the Yocto Project. This way, you can practice with your preferred distribution, as you would do in your real job. We suggest Ubuntu 24.04 if you don’t have any preference yet.

If you haven’t installed Linux on your laptop yet, most Linux distributions will allow you to install Linux alongside Windows, after making enough free space. Note that we don’t support the use of Virtual Machines (to run Linux from inside another operating system), as from our experience, connecting the Linux VM to the board and other devices is an endless source of distractions. Using VMs also causes a substantial loss of compiling performance.

This laptop should have at least 16 GB of RAM, a CPU with at least 4 physical cores and at least 50 GB of free disk space (200 GB for the Yocto course). It should also be equipped with a micro-SD card reader (internal or external).

The PC should also be equipped with a webcam a microphone. Another possibility would be to connect to the video-conference through another device, like another computer, a smartphone or tablet, while you are running your practical labs on the Linux PC. However, the Linux PC should work better for sharing your screen or screenshots with the instructor.

ELECTRONIC Board and accessories

You will need to get your hands on the BeaglePlay ARM64 board and a few accessories.

Note that those are provided by Root Commit for in-person sessions.

What is provided?

	In-person public sessions	In-person private sessions	Online public sessions
Electronic board and all its required accessories, for the duration of the course	✅	✅	❌
Lunch, morning and afternoon breaks	✅	❌	❌
Electronic copies of the lecture and practical lab materials.	✅	✅	✅
Solutions to practical labs	✅	✅	✅
Video recordings of the lectures from the trainer.	❌	❌	✅
Electronic training certificate, after successful completion of the course, which can be shared on your LinkedIn profile and on other social media.	✅	✅	✅

FAQ

Q: Will I get solutions to the practical labs?
A: Yes, solutions for the files to create or modify are shared at the end of each lab.

Q: What happens if I can’t order all the required hardware in time?
A: This won’t prevent you from attending the course, as fallback instructions with QEMU emulated hardware will be provided. However, you should do your best to avoid such an issue, as some labs will be less exhaustive without real hardware. In addition, working with real hardware helps to grasp the difference between the build machine and the target hardware.

See also our FAQ for all types of courses and our sustainability efforts.