How to make an Kodi (XBMC) SD card for the Wandboard

First, download the rootfs from geexbox

There is also a partial copy available here (I try to juste keep latest version of each kodi release)

Choose rootfs named geexbox-devel-*.cuboxi.tar.xz

With geexbox-devel-20171103-r2ac16c8.cuboxi.tar.xz you will get Kodi 16.1 Jarvis.
With geexbox-devel-20180203-r282b2e4.cuboxi.tar.xz you will get Kodi 17.6 Krypton.

SD card creation

About instruction:

Step 0. Prepare cross-building

Useful information for setting up cross-building can be found in the Basic board support package (on wandboard Downloads page) : read wand-dev.pdf

Then setup environment in your running shell, with for example :

export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-

GCC 4.9 or less must be used. GCC version 5.0 or more will fail to compile the kernel

Debian Jessie (8.0) with CrossToolchains or Ubuntu 16.04 lts has the correct build chain already packaged

Also check that tools bc, lzop and git are installed on your system.

Step 1. Build u-boot bootloader

Clone u-boot from https://github.com/wandboard-org/u-boot-fslc.git

Build u-boot (we use the SPL u-boot, since that can boot on all Wandboard variants)

make wandboard_spl_defconfig

Step 2. Prepare kernel

Clone kernel source from https://github.com/wandboard-org/linux

Don't forget to select a branch :

git checkout wandboard_imx_3.10.53_1.1.0_ga

Build kernel as a zImage :

make wandboard_defconfig
make menuconfig
make zImage

Build kernel modules :

make modules
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=MODULES_DEST_PATH modules_install

Prepare device tree

Build kernel dtb from the same git as above (https://github.com/wandboard-org/linux)[https://github.com/wandboard-org/linux]

make imx6q-wandboard.dtb
make imx6dl-wandboard.dtb

Step 3. Partition the SD card

Partition your SD card in two partitions, but leave some space before your first partition, around 128kB is more than enough.

partition 1: 8MB for fat16 format, then set boot mode using fdisk. partition 2: rest of size for ext4 format.

Step 4. Format SD card

Format /dev/sdx1 as FAT16 and ext4 type for /dev/sdx2.

Step 5. Make SD card bootable

Copy SPL image to the unpartitioned space before the first partition using command the command:

sudo dd if=SPL of=/dev/sdX bs=1k seek=1 oflag=dsync

Create a directory named boot in /dev/sdx1 and copy u-boot.img, zImage, wandboard dtb files (you'll find them in arch/arm/boot/dts/) into it.

Step 6. Prepare rootfs

Extract Geexbox rootfs tar file to /dev/sdx2 from http://download.geexbox.org/snapshots/geexbox-xbmc-imx6-cuboxi/

Done! Getting started

If needed you can connect with ssh or the Webconsole using root/root (you are strongly encouraged to change the password of course)