Po-util: The Ultimate Local Particle Experience for Linux and macOS

nrobinson2000 · 2016-06-04 13:47:15 UTC

I have updated po-util a lot recently. Most importantly, I have:

Added the po serial command for monitoring device output
Cleaned up code and removed redundancies
Created a promotional poster
Created a better logo
Purchased po-util.com domain

nrobinson2000 · 2016-06-25 01:49:21 UTC

I have started a wiki for po-util. https://github.com/nrobinson2000/po-util/wiki

nrobinson2000 · 2016-06-26 19:52:23 UTC

Release 2.0!

ENHANCEMENTS:

Added cool ascii art logo
Updated to Nodejs v6.x
Updated to gcc-arm-embedded v4.9
Build and flash can now take a third argument to compile a specific firmware directory
Improved update command
General bug fixes

Info:

Po-util is a handy script for installing and using the Particle Toolchain on Ubuntu-based distros and OSX. It downloads and installs: dfu-util, nodejs, gcc-arm-embedded, particle-cli, and the Particle Firmware source code. Information about po-util can be found on my website. https://po-util.com

Manual Install / Update

If you already have po-util installed, run `po update` and `po install` to update and re-install.

You can get a copy of po-util at the Github repository. The easiest way is to download po-util.sh from this link and run:

./po-util.sh install

To setup po-util and install dependencies.

Alternatively, you can clone po-util with git:

git clone https://github.com/nrobinson2000/po-util
cd po-util
./po-util.sh install

When installing po-util, an alias is added to your .bashrc that allows you to run po from anywhere to use po-util.

~~# Quick Install / Update~~

~~curl po-util.com/download | bash~~

~~Copy and paste this into your terminal.~~

~~Note: We download everything from well known locations and Github. While we believe this is a reasonable method as a quick start, it’s always a good idea to know what is going on under the hood.~~

Please use the Manual Install/Update instructions in the post above.

nrobinson2000 · 2016-07-14 16:22:11 UTC

Hi guys!

Can you please join my Thunderclap Campaign to help people discover po-util? https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/44489-help-support-po-util

Particle Offline Utility, pronounced po-util, is a script for installing and using the Particle Toolchain on Ubuntu-based distros and OSX.

Po-util makes it easy for developers to download the Particle Toolchain and install the required dependencies to quickly begin creating projects using the Particle Platform.

Po-util features a responsive experience, giving developers the tools they need for seamless local development. Po-util provides understandable commands for simplifying complex tasks like properly compiling and flashing firmware.

Po-util downloads and installs: dfu-util, nodejs, gcc-arm-embedded, particle-cli, and the Particle Firmware source code.

Nathan Robinson
@nrobinson2000

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-02 21:22:18 UTC

Po-util now supports building directories relative and un-relative to the current working directory. Support for other Linux Distributions, (Fedora, Arch) is being developed.

shm45 · 2016-09-07 12:31:25 UTC

Hello nrobinson,

Po-util is a very handy script–thanks much for sharing. How exactly does po-util trigger DFU mode on a Photon/P1 without pressing the SETUP and RESET buttons? Can po-util trigger DFU on a Photon/P1 straight from the factory?

-shm45

ScruffR · 2016-09-07 18:20:06 UTC

That’s a feature described here
https://docs.particle.io/reference/firmware/photon/#begin-

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-07 21:34:44 UTC

@shm45
To make po-util use the default Particle baud rate you need to edit the ~/.po configuration file and change the DFUBAUDRATE=19200 line to DFUBAUDRATE=14400
This is explained in the Triggering DFU mode on your Device(s) section of po-util.com.

po-util uses the stty command to change the baud rate of a device. When a Particle device detects a specific baud rate (14400 is Particle’s default), it goes into DFU mode.

Nathan Robinson
@nrobinson2000

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-08 01:08:14 UTC

Yes, this is supported on all Particle devices out of the box after editing the po-util config file.

shm45 · 2016-09-08 05:55:19 UTC

Excellent–thank you ScruffR and nrobinson.

Cheers,
shm45

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-09 15:34:37 UTC

I ~~have added support~~ am working on adding support for RHEL and Arch Linux distributions. I have also added a po config command which lets users easily select what branch of Paticle firmware they want to use and what baud rated they want to use to put devices into DFU mode.

I need users on distros like Fedora and Arch to test if po-util installs properly on their system. https://github.com/nrobinson2000/po-util/issues/24

Edit:
I am testing po-util in an Arch virtual machine and it is not working. I’m getting a similar error as this thread. Even if I completely delete arm-none-eabi, it still looks for it, saying:

/bin/sh: 1: /home/nrobinson/bin/gcc-arm-embedded/gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_9-2015q3/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc: not found

This is driving me crazy. I have checked po-util for anything that is causing this error, but I have not found anything. Note: Arch did not have a desktop environment, and I am beginning to think that no DE correlates to po-util not working.

I am now trying po-util on Fedora in another virtual machine.

Edit:
On Fedora 24 I get this error:

Building firmware for Production Photon, platform ID: 6, product ID: 6
/bin/sh: /usr/local/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory
/home/nrobinson/github/firmware/build/arm-tools.mk:43: *** "ARM gcc version 4.8.4 or later required, but found ".  Stop.
build/recurse.mk:11: recipe for target 'communication' failed
make: *** [communication] Error 2

A bit different, but still not working. Basically, it’s having the same problem as Arch, where it “can not find” the executables, even though they exist, and so do their links. They are visible to which, and found by which.

Does anyone have any input on this problem?

timx · 2016-09-10 08:40:44 UTC

Some thoughts:

Check the permissions for the file that you are trying to execute. I presume you install as root and then run another another username.

Check /var/log/secure for permissions violations or other errors.

Do you have SELinux enabled? Check using sestatus. That can upset a few things.

Using strace might help if you can narrow the problem down to a single command otherwise you will get too much diagnostic trace. For example, if I call zcat I get this:

[tim@c7va ~]$ strace zcat
execve("/usr/bin/zcat", ["zcat"], [/* 31 vars */]) = 0

If I then remove permissions to zcat I get this:

[tim@c7va ~]$ strace zcat
execve("/usr/bin/zcat", ["zcat"], [/* 31 vars */]) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
write(2, "strace: exec: Permission denied\n", 32strace: exec: Permission denied
) = 32
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

The other thing that I can think of is that environments can be slightly different depending on how a shell is invoked. Google “bash_profile or .bashrc” and see whether that might be affecting you.

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-10 17:21:11 UTC

@timx

On the Fedora virtual machine I get this when running sestatus:

[nrobinson@localhost po-util]$ sestatus 
SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /sys/fs/selinux
SELinux root directory:         /etc/selinux
Loaded policy name:             targeted
Current mode:                   enforcing
Mode from config file:          error (Permission denied)
Policy MLS status:              enabled
Policy deny_unknown status:     allowed
Max kernel policy version:      30

When I use which and strace, I get:

[nrobinson@localhost po-util]$ which arm-none-eabi-gcc
/usr/local/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc
[nrobinson@localhost po-util]$ strace arm-none-eabi-gcc
execve("/usr/local/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc", ["arm-none-eabi-gcc"], [/* 49 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "strace: exec: No such file or di"..., 40strace: exec: No such file or directory
) = 40
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

I’m going to see what happens when I follow this guide.

Edit:
No change after changing SELinux to permissive mode.

Edit:
I get similar results on Arch for strace:

execve("/usr/local/bin/arm-none-eabi-gcc", ["arm-none-eabi-gcc"], [/* 19 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "strace: exec: No such file or di"..., 40strace: exec: No such file or directory
) = 40
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

Edit:
This problem has also happened in the past on Ubuntu (14.04) on Travis CI.

However, Circle CI (Also Ubuntu 14.04) does not have any problems.

Neither does my Ubuntu VPS (16.04), which is able to use po-util just fine.

timx · 2016-09-10 21:15:28 UTC

I Googled and found an article that says you can get the not found message if one of the dependent libraries isn’t available. I guess that attempting to execute the compiler causes a cascade load of other modules and it’s one of those that wasn’t found.

Ref: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183052

I therefore tried the following on one of my Centos 7 VMs (64 bit):

Downloaded https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded/5.0/5-2016-q2-update/+download/gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_4-2016q2-20160622-linux.tar.bz2
unzipped it

[root@c7va bin]# ./arm-none-eabi-gcc
-bash: ./arm-none-eabi-gcc: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory

[root@c7va bin]# strace ./arm-none-eabi-gcc
execve("./arm-none-eabi-gcc", ["./arm-none-eabi-gcc"], [/* 24 vars */]) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
write(2, "strace: exec: No such file or di"..., 40strace: exec: No such file or directory
) = 40
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

[root@c7va bin]# file arm-none-eabi-gcc
arm-none-eabi-gcc: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, stripped

yum install glibc.i686

[root@c7va bin]# ./arm-none-eabi-gcc
arm-none-eabi-gcc: fatal error: no input files
compilation terminated.

So I was able pretty much reproduce the error that you get. That last command suggests that the code can now be loaded and it simply needs an input file. The reason why I installed glibc.i686 was because it was one of the packages that I used to install when I was building my own Docker containers for compiling the Particle firmware. That was 18 months ago so I’ve forgotten why I had to do it but this is probably why

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-10 21:57:25 UTC

@timx
Thank you for your help. Installing the glibc.i686 package fixed the arm-none-eabi-gcc part of the problem, but I also had to install vim-common to provide the xxd command, and perl-Archive-Zip-1.58-1.fc24.noarch to provide to crc32 command. Installing these 3 extra packages makes po-util work perfectly on my Fedora virtual machine.

I suspect that to fix the problem on Arch, I will have to install something like glibc.

Update:
Installing lib32-glibc, vim and yaourt with pacman and installing perl-archive-zip from yaourt worked for Arch.

Update:
Installing the libc6-i386 package on Ubuntu fixes the problem for Travis CI.

I have added these packages to the installation part of po-util, and it should now work on all of these distributions.

Update:

I think arm-none-eabi-gcc requires the 32bit libraries for C.

nrobinson2000 · 2016-09-12 23:23:19 UTC

I just made a guide on Hackster about po-util. Read it here https://www.hackster.io/nrobinson2000/use-po-util-to-build-code-for-particle-devices-37629f

nrobinson2000 · 2016-10-23 21:49:54 UTC

Po-util 3.0 released!

I have now built a Library manager into po-util. It lets you download and use libraries hosted on GitHub easily in multiple project directories by creating symbolic links. Here is a preview of the commands for the Libray manager:

"po library": The Particle Library manager for po-util.
                Libraries are kept in ~/.po-util/lib

Commands:
  get          Download a Particle Library from GitHub and optionally name it.
  install      Example:
                      po lib get https://github.com/user/libraryName libraryName

  add          Add a downloaded library to a po-util project.
  import       Libraries are added in the firmware directory as soft links.
               Example:
                      po lib add libraryName

  remove       Remove a library from a po-util project.
  rm           Just the soft links are deleted.
               Example:
                      po lib rm libraryName

  create       Create a library from C++ files in the project directory.
               Example:
                      po lib create someLibrary

  purge        Uninstall (delete) a library from ~/.po-util/lib
               Example:
                      po lib purge someLibrary

  list         Show all libraries in ~/.po-util/lib

  help         Show this help documentation.

I have also fixed some minor bugs.

UPDATE:
I made a post about how to use the library manager to download a library available on the Web IDE.

Cloud · 2016-10-25 08:04:39 UTC

I can’t heart this enough!

nrobinson2000 · 2016-10-26 17:51:42 UTC

Thanks. The only thing po-util is missing now is a Windows version, although people should just be using GNU/Linux anyway.

nrobinson2000 · 2016-11-17 04:33:02 UTC

I have added support for Atom Build shortcuts for po-util. The shortcuts are interpreted by the atom build package, and the corresponding po-util command is run.

Atom Build Shortcuts:
  Build        CTRL-ALT-1   These shortcuts allow you     This requires the
  Flash        CTRL-ALT-2   to run common po-util         "build" package for
  Clean        CTRL-ALT-3   commands quickly while        Atom.  Get it with:
  DFU          CTRL-ALT-4   using Atom.                   "apm install build"
  OTA          CTRL-ALT-5

As always, po-util can be installed with:

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nrobinson2000/po-util/master/po-util.sh
./po-util.sh install

Or if you already have po-util just run:

po update