Troubleshooting

The documentation for Neoverse reference design platform software typically suffices in most cases. But there could be certain host development machine dependencies that could cause failures either during build or execution stages. This page provides solutions for known issues that could affect the use of the platform software stack.

Error while using repo command

The repo init or repo sync command fails with the below listed error message.

File "<path-to-workspace>/.repo/repo/main.py", line 79
file=sys.stderr)
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The typical reason for this failure could be that the default version of python on the development machine is not python3.6. To resolve this issue, install the latest version of python, if not already installed on the development machine and invoke the repo command from /usr/bin/ with python3 as listed below.

python3 /usr/bin/repo init -u https://git.gitlab.arm.com/infra-solutions/reference-design/infra-refdesign-manifests.git -m pinned-rdv1.xml -b refs/tags/RD-INFRA-2021.02.24
python3 /usr/bin/repo sync -c -j $(nproc) --fetch-submodules --force-sync --no-clone-bundle

On systems with python version less than 3.6, there could be further failures as listed below.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<path-to-workspace>/.repo/repo/main.py", line 42, in <module>
    from git_config import RepoConfig
  File "<path-to-workspace>/.repo/repo/git_config.py", line 774
    self._Set(f'superproject.{key}', value)
                                  ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

If python3 version cannot be updated using the package manager, use the following commands to build and install python3.7.2 from the source.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libgdbm-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev libreadline-dev libffi-dev wget libsqlite3-dev python-openssl bzip2
cd /tmp
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.2/Python-3.7.2.tar.xz
tar -xf Python-3.7.2.tar.xz
cd Python-3.7.2
./configure
make -j
sudo make altinstall

This will install install python3.7 in /usr/local/bin/ path and the repo command can be invoked using this version.

/usr/local/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/repo init -u https://git.gitlab.arm.com/infra-solutions/reference-design/infra-refdesign-manifests.git -m pinned-rdv1.xml -b refs/tags/RD-INFRA-2021.02.24
/usr/local/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/repo sync -c -j $(nproc) --fetch-submodules --force-sync --no-clone-bundle

Builds do not progress to completion

During the build of the platform software stack, components such as grub download additional code from remote repositories using the git port (or the git protocol). Development machines on which git port is blocked, the build does not progress to completion, waiting for the additional code to be downloaded. This typically is observed when setting up a new platform software workspace.

As a workaround, use https instead of git protocol for cloning required git submodules of the various components in the software stack. A patch, as an example of this change in the grub component, is listed below.

diff --git a/bootstrap b/bootstrap
index 5b08e7e2d..031784582 100755
--- a/bootstrap
+++ b/bootstrap
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ PERL="${PERL-perl}"

 me=$0

-default_gnulib_url=git://git.sv.gnu.org/gnulib
+default_gnulib_url=https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/gnulib.git

 usage() {
   cat <<EOF

FVP closes abruptly

Tests such as distro installation take few hours to complete on Neoverse Reference Desgin platform FVPs. If the model quits abruptly during its execution without any particular error message displayed in the model launch window, the host machine’s memory requirements has to be rechecked. This issue is typically seen if the host machine has a configuration below that of on the one listed at recommended configuration.

Repo sync fails when downloading linux repo

If the download of the linux repo fails during the execution of the repo sync command, rerun the repo init command with the --depth=1 parameter appended to the repo init command. The parameter --depth=1 reduces the commit history that is downloaded and can address this failure in downloading linux repo.

Error: “/usr/bin/env: ‘python’: No such file or directory”

repo init could fail if it can’t find a compatible reference to python. Please make sure you have the required version of python as mentioned in install repo prerequisites section.

If the error still persists, check if /usr/bin has a binary named python. If you find the binary name to be python3 (or any python3.x for that matter) and /usr/bin/python is not found, then create a softlink to work around this issue as shown below:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python