QNX Technical Articles
QNX® Software Development Platform for x86 Targets 6.5.0: Installation Note — QNX® Neutrino® Hosts
Date of this edition: July 22, 2011
Target OS: This development suite produces software that's compatible with x86 targets that are running QNX® Neutrino® 6.5.0.
Host OS: You can install this package in an empty partition on your system.
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If you downloaded QNX SDP 6.5.0 from our website
between June 28, 2010 and July 12, 2010, please read the following:
Build 201006230248 of 6.5.0 contained a filesystem error. If you installed that version, uninstall it, and then install build 201007091524. To determine which version you have, check the build number in the archive name or in base_dir/install/qnxsdp/6.5.0/version. On self-hosted QNX Neutrino systems, you can also use the uname -v command to get a version timestamp that identifies the build:
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Contents
- Licensing
- Before you start
- System requirements
- BIOS settings
- Installing QNX SDP
- Errors while booting
- Activating QNX SDP
- Commercializing your evaluation software
- Uninstalling QNX SDP
- Determining your base directory
- Getting started with the documentation
- Technical support
Licensing
QNX SDP 6.5.0 introduces a new licensing scheme:
- There are several QNX Development License streams that govern how the QNX Software Development Platform can be used in different situations. The key on your license certificate will cause the appropriate license agreement to be displayed when you install QNX SDP; that development license governs your use of the product.
- 6.5.0 doesn't accept license keys from earlier versions of QNX SDP.
- If you have a support plan for an earlier version of QNX SDP, you can get a license key for 6.5.0 from our website; go to http://www.qnx.com, log into your myQNX account, and click Upgrade to QNX SDP 6.5.
- Some licensing is now for a specific user. If your license key indicates that you have a “named user” license, the activation requires that you provide an email address.
Once you've installed the QNX Software Development Platform, you can find all the license agreements in base_dir/install/qnxsdp/6.5.0, where base_dir is where you installed SDP (see the output from the qconfig command).
For more information about license agreements, see the Licensing area of http://www.qnx.com, or email licensing@qnx.com.
Before you start
Before you install this software, please note the following:
- The installers do a fresh installation of the QNX Software Development Platform.
- On Linux and Windows hosts, QNX SDP includes the QNX Momentics Tool Suite, which you can use to develop applications to run on the QNX Neutrino RTOS on a separate target system.
- QNX SDP for self-hosted QNX Neutrino systems first installs the QNX Neutrino RTOS, followed by the QNX Momentics Tool Suite.
- QNX SDP includes everything you need to build for all supported target platforms (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, and x86). There are also special versions of QNX SDP for x86 targets only.
- We no longer support development for ARMBE targets, but we once again support it for MIPS.
- We post CRC and MD5 checksums with the packages in the Download area on our website. If you download a CD or DVD image or an installer from our website, make sure that its checksum matches that given on the website. On Unix-style OSs (e.g. QNX Neutrino, Linux), you can use the cksum utility to calculate the CRC checksum. Microsoft doesn't support such utilities on Windows, but they're available from third parties.
- QNX SDP 6.5.0 can coexist with QNX SDP 6.4.0, 6.4.1, and QNX Momentics 6.3,
but if you want 6.5.0 to replace 6.4.1, 6.4.0, or 6.3, you must uninstall
the older versions and any updates to them before installing 6.5.0.
Coexistence with QNX Momentics 6.2.1 is supported only on Windows hosts (we didn't support Linux hosts in 6.2.1).
- For information about new features and known issues in QNX SDP, see the release notes. The online documentation includes a copy, but for for the most up-to-date version, go to our website, www.qnx.com, log into your myQNX account, and then go to .
- For information about using BSPs with QNX SDP 6.5.0, see the BSP Migration Guide in the BSPs and Drivers project on Foundry27.
- For QNX Neutrino self-hosted development, it's possible to have more
than one version of QNX SDP installed on your computer at
the same time, by having them in separate partitions.
If you want to retain an earlier released version of
QNX SDP or QNX Momentics,
install 6.5.0 in a new partition.
When you boot, you're asked to choose the partition by its number. If you're then prompted to choose from multiple .diskroot files, choose the one that corresponds to the partition that you already chose.
- In text mode, we support only the US keyboard layout.
- You can install QNX SDP into a new partition without harming the contents of other partitions.
- If you install QNX Neutrino in a partition on a Windows machine and later use Windows software to create another partition, you'll lose your QNX Neutrino partition.
- The Neutrino boot process can dynamically add block I/O (i.e. disk) drivers, letting you boot on systems with newer controllers. The mechanism is simple and not proprietary to QNX Software Systems, so third parties can offer enhanced block drivers without any intervention on our part. For more information, see “Updating disk drivers” in the Controlling How Neutrino Starts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide.
System requirements
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 2 GHz or more Intel Pentium 4 | 2 GHz or more Intel Pentium 4 |
| RAM | 512 MB | 1 GB |
| Disk space | 1.6 GB | 1.8 GB |
| Monitor | 1024×768 | 1280×1024 |
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Some x86 systems can run in System Management Mode (SMM), where the BIOS installs special code that runs when a System Management Interrupt (SMI) occurs. SMI interrupts may be generated by the motherboard or peripheral hardware, and can't be masked by the operating system. When SMM is entered, normal operations — including the OS — are suspended, and the SMI handler runs at a high priority. Avoid using systems where SMM can't be disabled, because it can destroy QNX Neutrino's realtime performance. The OS can't do anything about the delays that SMM introduces, nor can the OS even detect that the system has entered SMM. |
You can also install the QNX Neutrino RTOS as a virtual machine on VMware Workstation 6.5 or 7.0, VMWare Player 3.0, and Microsoft VirtualPC 2007. To ensure that VMware is supported for your host, search the compatibility guide located at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php. If you find problems with any virtualization environment, please post your findings in one of the forums in our Foundry27 community website.
BIOS settings
We recommend you use the following BIOS settings:
- Disable Plug and Play OS.
- Set any parallel ports and onboard serial ports to specific addresses, if possible, instead of using an automatic setting.
- Enable SATA if your system includes a SATA drive.
- If you want to boot QNX Neutrino from the DVD or CD — either to try it without installing it, or for troubleshooting — make sure that the appropriate drive is the first boot device.
- If your BIOS is has an option for booting from “Other USB devices,” enabling it could make the BIOS take a very long time to start.
Installing QNX SDP
To install QNX SDP, do the following:
- Insert the QNX Software Development Platform 6.5.0 Installation DVD or the QNX Software Development Platform 6.5.0 Installation and Boot CD (x86 Targets) into the appropriate drive.
- Boot from the disk and follow the instructions on your screen.
Depending on your system, the installer may ask you to do the following:
- Decide whether to run from the disk or install QNX Neutrino into a new disk partition. Press F3 to install, and then choose between normal and verbose modes.
- Enter your license key. You can use lower- or uppercase for the letters, and it doesn't matter if you include or omit the hyphens.
- Read the license agreement. To accept its terms and continue with the installation, press F1.
- Choose which disk you'd like to install QNX Neutrino on.
- If your system has more than one DVD or CD drive, choose which one you'd like to install QNX Neutrino from.
- Choose the location for the new partition, and then the type:
- 177, 178, or 179 for the Power-Safe (fs-qnx6.so) filesystem — see the Filesystems chapter of the System Architecture guide for a description
- 77, 78, or 79 for the QNX 4 (fs-qnx4.so) filesystem
If you're installing directly to a USB drive, choose one of the QNX 4 types (77, 78, or 79). The Power-Safe (fs-qnx6.so) filesystem can't guarantee that the filesystem is power-safe on devices that don't support synchronizing.
The default is 179. If there's already a partition of the type you chose, you're given the choice of deleting a partition or choosing another type.
- Choose the size of the new partition.
- The installer might ask you to choose a boot loader to use.
- Choose where to install the software. We recommend you use the default location, /usr/qnx650.
The installer will also ask if you wish to install a package of GNU Public License programs, such as tar and sed. We recommend that you do so for development machines.
If you encounter any I/O errors during the installation, disable DMA by restarting and pressing d when the system displays the “Hit space for options...” message. (Ref# 42044) - When prompted, remove the disk from the drive and then reboot.
- If your EIDE doesn't support DMA:
- If you're using the Power-Safe filesystem (fs-qnx6.so), boot using qnxbase.ifs.
- If you're using the QNX 4 filesystem (fs-qnx4.so), boot with .altboot by pressing Esc when prompted.
- If you've installed QNX Neutrino directly on a USB drive, and
the system doesn't boot automatically, replace the partition
boot loader; from a working system, run:
dloader /dev/part pc2
where part is the device name of the partition you need to boot. (Ref# 61707)
If you have more than one partition on your disk, choose the one you installed QNX Neutrino in. Choose the appropriate boot loader. If you don't choose a partition or boot loader, the system uses the default ones.
- If your EIDE doesn't support DMA:
- The first time you boot, a dialog asks you to
choose the video driver, resolution, color depth, and refresh rate
that are appropriate for your system.
You can also select Global Options so you can
choose whether to boot into text or graphical (Photon) mode.
When you start a QNX Neutrino system for the first time, it chooses a “safe” graphics driver (devg-svga.so or devg-vesabios.so, depending on the installed chipset). However, these generic VESA BIOS and SVGA drivers can negatively impact the timing of a system and affect realtime operations. We recommended you use an accelerated driver instead, if at all possible. - Log in as root (or click Superuser in graphical mode). This account initially has no password; for instructions for setting the password and creating other accounts, see the Managing User Accounts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide. You'll find this manual in the online documentation, as well as on our website.
- Set the time zone, time, date, and so on in the Localization windows.
- Activate your software (see “Activating QNX SDP,” below).
For more information about booting, see the Controlling How Neutrino Starts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide.
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If you're using a computer that
supports APIC chipsets, you should download and install the APIC-enabled
QNX Neutrino ISO from
on our website,
www.qnx.com.
This ISO image boots using startup-apic and pci-bios-v2 and will install a new boot image called qnxbasesmp-apic.ifs. This is the default image for normal booting. If you've installed QNX SDP from the x86-only CD, or if you've installed using the APIC-enabled version of the x86-only CD from the download center and you want to target non-x86 platforms for development, you must manually install the non-x86 targets, as follows:
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Errors while booting
If an error occurs while you're booting your system, the boot loader may display the error messages listed below, depending on the type of partition that you chose.
For a Power-Safe (fs-qnx6.so) filesystem, the boot loader may display the following messages:
- Unsupported BIOS
- The BIOS doesn't support INT13 LBA extensions.
- Missing OS Image
- The filesystem isn't an fs-qnx6 one, or the .boot directory is empty.
- Invalid OS Image
- The selected file isn't an x86 startup boot image.
- Disk Read Error
- A physical I/O error occurred while reading the disk.
- Ram Error
- A physical RAM error occurred while copying the boot image.
If an error occurs when you boot from a QNX 4 filesystem, the boot loader displays one of the following characters, and then the boot process halts:
- S
- No OS signature was found.
- D or ?
- An error occurred reading the disk.
For more information, see the Controlling How Neutrino Starts chapter of the QNX Neutrino User's Guide.
Activating QNX SDP
The QNX Momentics Tool Suite and certain related products require activation. If you don't activate the product within the specified timeframe, the product will cease to function until you activate it. No personal data is transferred during the activation process. If your license key indicates that you have a “named user” license, the activation requires that you provide an email address.
Activating automatically
If your development host is connected to the Internet, you can activate QNX SDP automatically.
Activating manually
if your machine isn't connected to the Internet, you must activate your software manually from a machine that is, by doing the following:
- In the QNX SDP Activation dialog, click Activate Manually.
The Manual Activation dialog appears with an activate-prompt key. This dialog has a button that you can use to save the activate-prompt key in a file, /etc/qnx/license/activate_prompt_key.txt. Using this file eliminates the need to retype the key, which can be error-prone.
- Transfer the activate-prompt key to the machine that's connected to the Internet.
- Go to our website, www.qnx.com, log into your myQNX account, and choose Manual Product Activation.
- Enter the activate-prompt key into the form that appears, and then click Generate Response Key. This will return an activate-response key.
- Copy the activate-response key and paste it in a file.
- Transfer the file into /etc/qnx/license/activate_response_key.txt on your QNX SDP development host.
- If you closed the QNX SDP Activation dialog, open it again
by selecting
from the Launch menu, or by entering the following at a terminal prompt:
/etc/qnx/bin/qnxactivate -a
- Choose Activate Manually, and use the Load Response from File button to load the activate-response key, and then click Activate.
If you choose not to activate at the time of installation, you can activate later by selecting from the Launch menu, or by entering the following at a terminal prompt:
/etc/qnx/bin/qnxactivate -a
Commercializing your evaluation software
If you installed an evaluation copy of QNX SDP 6.5.0, and you've now received a commercial QNX license, do the following to add your commercial license:
- Choose from the Launch menu.
- Enter the license key.
- After entering the license key, you'll be presented with the appropriate license agreement. You'll need to accept it in order to successfully add a license.
Uninstalling QNX SDP
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You should uninstall QNX products in the reverse order in which you
installed them.
To determine this order, use a command like this:
ls -lt `find base_directory -name "*uninstall*.sh"` where base_directory is where you installed the QNX Software Development Platform. |
To completely uninstall QNX SDP, simply erase or delete the partition you installed it in.
Determining your base directory
To determine the base directory for QNX SDP, open a command shell and use the qconfig command. For example:
$ qconfig
QNX Installations
Installation Name: QNX Software Development Platform 6.5.0
Version: 6.5.0
Base Directory: /usr/qnx650/
QNX_HOST: /usr/qnx650/host/qnx6/x86/
QNX_TARGET: /usr/qnx650/target/qnx6/
The base directory in this example is /usr/qnx650/, but it could be different on your machine, depending on where you installed QNX SDP.
Getting started with the documentation
After you've installed QNX SDP, you'll find an extensive set of HTML documentation:
- On Linux and Windows development hosts, you can read it in the Integrated Development Environment's help system. On Linux, use the qde command to start the IDE; on Windows, use the desktop icon.
- On self-hosted QNX Neutrino systems, you can read it
in the Photon helpviewer, or you can
use a web browser to display:
${QNX_TARGET}/usr/help/product/momentics/bookset.html
The “roadmap” page contains links to the various HTML booksets that accompany the OS. We recommend that you start with Welcome to the QNX Software Development Platform for an overview of QNX SDP. Next, see 10 Steps to Developing a QNX Program: Quickstart Guide for a short tutorial that will help you get started, and then refer to the other documents (System Architecture, QNX Neutrino Programmer's Guide, Library Reference, Utilities Reference, and so on).
You can install and work with multiple versions of QNX Neutrino. Whether you're using the command line or the IDE, you can choose which version of the OS to build programs for. For more information, see the IDE User's Guide or the QNX Neutrino Programmer's Guide.
Technical support
To obtain technical support for any QNX product, visit the Support area on our website (www.qnx.com). You'll find a wide range of support options, including community forums.
For questions about installing and using QNX SDP, see the QNX Momentics Getting Started forum on our Foundry27 site, http://community.qnx.com. There are other forums for specific topics, including the QNX Neutrino RTOS, development tools, networking, Board Support Packages, and so on.