4. Selecting Base Utils

This section won’t discuss the different available linux base utilities or what they are just how to select one in yocto project.

Specifically how to select coreutils over busybox.

4.1. Select Coreutils Over Busybox

Append bellow to conf/distro/mydistro.conf.

NOTE: To fully support coreutils over busybox you have to override recipes-core/initrdscripts/initramfs-framework.bb. Utilizing a bbappend (BitBake Append) file. Since we only test in a VM there’s no need for the override.

# Replaces busybox,uutils-coreutils with coreutils
SKIP_RECIPE[uutils-coreutils] = "Don't build this"
SKIP_RECIPE[busybox] = "Don't build this"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_syslog = ""
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_login_manager = "shadow-base"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_base-utils = "packagegroup-core-base-utils"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_base-utils-hwclock = "util-linux-hwclock"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_base-utils-syslog = ""
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_vim = "vim"

PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/base-utils = "packagegroup-core-base-utils"
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_coreutils = "coreutils"
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_uutils-coreutils = "coreutils"

Most of these variables where already discussed in the previous section.

See Yocto Project Variable Glossary for more details.

  • SKIP_RECIPE
    Used to ensure a given recipe does not build.
  • base-utils
    Includes cp,rm,mv,pwd,ls,sed,dd,etc..
  • uutils-coreutils
    A rust implementation of GNU Coreutils. Provided by meta-openembedded.

4.2. Building System Image

$ MACHINE="qemux86-64" DISTRO="mydistro" bitbake core-image-base

4.3. Testing In A VM

You should now see systemd in the serial output.

$ runqemu tmp/deploy/images/qemux86-64/core-image-base-qemux86-64.rootfs.qemuboot.conf \
          core-image-base \
          slirp \
          serialstdio

$ ls /usr/bin/*.coreutils

# Make sure the busybox implementation is not there
$ ls /usr/bin/*.busy*