Getting started guide for Intel NUC¶
The Intel® NUC is the primary tested platform for ACRN development, and its setup is described below.
Hardware setup¶
Intel Apollo Lake NUC (APL) and Intel Kaby Lake NUC (KBL), described in Supported Hardware , are currently supported for ACRN development:
- We can enable the serial console on KBL (NUC7i7DN), but this is not supported on APL (NUC6CAYH).
Connecting to the serial port¶
If you don’t need a serial console you can ignore this section.
Neither the APL or KBL NUCs present an external serial port interface. However, the KBL NUC does have a serial port header you can expose with a serial DB9 header cable. You can build this cable yourself, referring to the KBL NUC product specification as shown below:
Figure 11 KBL serial port header details
Or you can purchase such a cable.
If you want to use the RS232 DB9 female/female cable, please choose the cross-over type rather than straight-through type.
Firmware update on the NUC¶
You may need to update to the latest UEFI firmware for the NUC hardware. Follow these BIOS Update Instructions for downloading and flashing an updated BIOS for the NUC.
Software setup¶
Set up a Clear Linux Operating System¶
We begin by installing Clear Linux* as the development OS on the NUC. The Clear Linux release includes an acrn.efi hypervisor application that will be added to the EFI partition (by the quick setup script or manually, as described below).
Please refer to the ACRN Release Notes for the Clear Linux OS version number tested with a specific ACRN release. Adjust the instruction below to reference the appropriate version number of Clear Linux OS (we use version 28960 as an example).
Download the compressed Clear Linux OS installer image from https://download.clearlinux.org/releases/28960/clear/clear-28960-installer.img.xz and follow the Clear Linux OS installation guide as a starting point for installing Clear Linux OS onto your platform. Follow the recommended options for choosing an Advanced options installation type, and using the platform’s storage as the target device for installation (overwriting the existing data).
When setting up Clear Linux on your NUC:
- Launch the Clear Linux OS installer boot menu
- With Clear Linux OS highlighted, select Enter.
- From the Main Menu, select “Configure Media” and set “Auto Partition” to your desired hard disk.
- Press A to show the “Advanced options”.
- Select “Additional Bundle Selection” to add bundles for “desktop-autostart”, “editors”, “network-basic”, “user-basic”
- Select “User Manager” to add an administrative user “clear” and password.
- Select “Assign Hostname” to set the hostname as “clr-sos-guest”
- Select Confirm to start installation.
After installation is complete, boot into Clear Linux OS, login as clear (using the password you set earlier).
The instructions below provide details for setting up the ACRN Hypervisor, Service OS, and Guest OS. Along with the manual step details, We also provide an automated script that does all these steps for you, so you can skip these manual steps. See the quick-setup-guide section below to use the automated setup script.
Use the script to set up ACRN automatically¶
We provide an acrn_quick_setup.sh script in the ACRN GitHub repo to quickly and automatically set up the SOS and UOS and generate a customized script for launching the UOS.
This script requires the Clear Linux version number you’d like to set up for the ACRN SOS and UOS. The version specified must be greater than or equal to the Clear Linux version currently installed on the NUC. You can see your current Clear Linux version with the command:
In the following steps, we’re using Clear Linux version 28960. You should specify the Clear Linux version you want to use.
Here are the steps to install Clear Linux on your NUC, set up the SOS and UOS using the acrn_quick_setup.sh script, and launch the UOS:
Installing Clear Linux and login system
Open a terminal
Download acrn_quick_setup.sh script to set up the SOS. (If you don’t need a proxy to get the script, you can just skip the export command.)
This script is using /dev/sda1 as default EFI System Partition ESP). If the ESP is different based on your hardware, you can specify it using -e option. For example, to set up the SOS on an NVMe SSD, you could specify:
If you don’t need to reboot automatically after setting up the SOS, you can specify the -d parameter (don’t reboot)
After the system reboots, login as the clear user. You can verify the SOS booted successfully by checking the dmesg log:
Continue by setting up a Guest OS using the acrn_quick_setup.sh script with the -u option (and the same Clear Linux version number):
After the download is completed, you’ll get this output.
Now you can launch the UOS using the customized launch_uos script (with sudo):
Login as root (and specify the new password). You can verify you’re running in the UOS by checking the kernel release version or seeing if acrn devices are visible:
In the UOS there won’t be any /dev/acrn* devices. If you’re in the SOS, you’d see results such as these:
With that you’ve successfully set up Clear Linux at the Service and User OS and started up a UOS VM.
Manual setup ACRN guide¶
Instead of using the quick setup script, you can also set up ACRN, SOS, and UOS manually following these steps:
After installing Clear Linux on the NUC, login as the clear user and open a terminal window.
Clear Linux OS is set to automatically update itself. We recommend that you disable this feature to have more control over when updates happen. Use this command to disable the autoupdate feature:
The Clear Linux OS installer will automatically check for updates and install the latest version available on your system. If you wish to use a specific version (such as 28960), you can achieve that after the installation has completed using sudo swupd verify —fix —picky -m 28960
If you have an older version of Clear Linux OS already installed on your hardware, use this command to upgrade Clear Linux OS to version 28960 (or newer):
Use the sudo swupd bundle-add command and add these Clear Linux OS bundles:
Add the ACRN hypervisor to the EFI Partition¶
In order to boot the ACRN SOS on the platform, you’ll need to add it to the EFI partition. Follow these steps:
Mount the EFI partition and verify you have the following files:
On Clear Linux OS, the EFI System Partition (e.g.: /dev/sda1 ) is mounted under /boot by default The Clear Linux project releases updates often, sometimes twice a day, so make note of the specific kernel versions (iot-lts2018 and *iot-lts2018-sos) listed on your system, as you will need them later.
The EFI System Partition (ESP) may be different based on your hardware. It will typically be something like /dev/mmcblk0p1 on platforms that have an on-board eMMC or /dev/nvme0n1p1 if your system has a non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI Express (PCIe) bus (NVMe).
Put the acrn.efi hypervisor application (included in the Clear Linux OS release) on the EFI partition with:
Configure the EFI firmware to boot the ACRN hypervisor by default
The ACRN hypervisor ( acrn.efi ) is an EFI executable loaded directly by the platform EFI firmware. It then in turns loads the Service OS bootloader. Use the efibootmgr utility to configure the EFI firmware and add a new entry that loads the ACRN hypervisor.
Be aware that a Clear Linux OS update that includes a kernel upgrade will reset the boot option changes you just made. A Clear Linux OS update could happen automatically (if you have not disabled it as described above), if you later install a new bundle to your system, or simply if you decide to trigger an update manually. Whenever that happens, double-check the platform boot order using efibootmgr -v and modify it if needed.
The ACRN hypervisor ( acrn.efi ) accepts three command-line parameters that tweak its behavior:
bootloader= : this sets the EFI executable to be loaded once the hypervisor is up and running. This is typically the bootloader of the Service OS and the default value is to use the Clear Linux OS bootloader, i.e.: \EFI\org.clearlinux\bootloaderx64.efi .
uart= : this tells the hypervisor where the serial port (UART) is found or whether it should be disabled. There are three forms for this parameter:
- uart=disabled : this disables the serial port completely
- uart=bdf@<BDF value> : this sets the PCI serial port based on its BDF. For example, use bdf@0:18.1 for a BDF of 0:18.1 ttyS1.
- uart=port@<port address> : this sets the serial port address
uart=port@<port address> is required if you want to enable the serial console. You should run dmesg |grep ttyS0 to get port address from the output, and then add the uart parameter into the efibootmgr command.
vuart=ttySn@irqN : this tells the hypervisor which virtual serial device SOS will use and its IRQ number. This is used to avoid conflict with SOS passthrough devices’ interrupt. If UART is set to ttyS1, and its native IRQ is 5, you’d better set vuart=ttyS1@irq5 (Use ‘dmesg | grep tty’ to get IRQ information). Also set console=ttyS1 in acrn.conf to match the SOS boot args.
Here is a more complete example of how to configure the EFI firmware to load the ACRN hypervisor and set these parameters.
And also here is the example of how to enable a serial console for KBL NUC.
Create a boot entry for the ACRN Service OS by copying a provided acrn.conf and editing it to account for the kernel versions noted in a previous step.
It must contain these settings:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| title | Text to show in the boot menu |
| linux | Linux kernel for the Service OS (*-sos) |
| options | Options to pass to the Service OS kernel (kernel parameters) |
A starter acrn.conf configuration file is included in the Clear Linux OS release and is also available in the acrn-hypervisor/hypervisor GitHub repo as acrn.conf as shown here:
On the platform, copy the acrn.conf file to the EFI partition we mounted earlier:
You will need to edit this file to adjust the kernel version ( linux section), insert the PARTUUID of your /dev/sda3 partition ( root=PARTUUID=<UUID of rootfs partition> ) in the options section, and add the hugepagesz=1G hugepages=2 at end of the options section.
Use blkid to find out what your /dev/sda3 PARTUUID value is. Here is a handy one-line command to do that:
It is also possible to use the device name directly, e.g. root=/dev/sda3
Add a timeout period for Systemd-Boot to wait, otherwise it will not present the boot menu and will always boot the base Clear Linux OS
Reboot and select “The ACRN Service OS” to boot, as shown below:
After booting up the ACRN hypervisor, the Service OS will be launched automatically by default, and the Clear Linux OS desktop will be showing with user “clear”, (or you can login remotely with an “ssh” client). If there is any issue which makes the GNOME desktop doesn’t show successfully, then the system will go to shell console.
From ssh client, login as user “clear” using the password you set previously when you installed Clear Linux OS.
After rebooting the system, check that the ACRN hypervisor is running properly with:
If you see log information similar to this, the ACRN hypervisor is running properly and you can start deploying a User OS. If not, verify the EFI boot options, SOS kernel, and acrn.conf settings are correct (as described above).
ACRN Network Bridge¶
ACRN bridge has been setup as a part of systemd services for device communication. The default bridge creates acrn_br0 which is the bridge and tap0 as an initial setup. The files can be found in /usr/lib/systemd/network . No additional setup is needed since systemd-networkd is automatically enabled after a system restart.
Set up Reference UOS¶
On your platform, download the pre-built reference Clear Linux OS UOS image version 28960 (or newer) into your (root) home directory:
In case you want to use or try out a newer version of Clear Linux OS as the UOS, you can download the latest from http://download.clearlinux.org/image. Make sure to adjust the steps described below accordingly (image file name and kernel modules version).
Deploy the UOS kernel modules to UOS virtual disk image (note: you’ll need to use the same iot-lts2018 image version number noted in step 1 above):
Edit and Run the launch_uos.sh script to launch the UOS.
A sample launch_uos.sh is included in the Clear Linux OS release, and is also available in the acrn-hypervisor/devicemodel GitHub repo (in the samples folder) as shown here:
By default, the script is located in the /usr/share/acrn/samples/nuc/ directory. You can run it to launch the User OS:
At this point, you’ve successfully booted the ACRN hypervisor, SOS, and UOS:
J.D. Hodges
Q. Help! I have a new little Intel NUC computer and I can’t get it to enter the BIOS �� I have a monitor hooked up with HDMI and a keyboard via USB. I checked the keyboard on another computer and it works great, but on the NUC I can never get it to enter the BIOS in time on bootup! Please help!
-Richard
A. Hi Richard, is that keyboard connected to the back of the NUC? If not, you probably need to use the front USB port. Some Intel NUCs, especially the early models, seem to only be able to utilize the front USB port for keyboard BIOS/UEFI access. So, please use the following steps:
- Connect a known good USB keyboard to the front USB port
- Power on the system
- Keep pressing F2 to enter BIOS/UEFI
Use the front USB port on your NUC
Hopefully that will do the trick for you!
Best regards,
-J.D.
Followup from Richard:
That did the trick, the FRONT USB port let me get right into the visual BIOS, THANK YOU ��
Setting the BIOS in Intel NUC5i7RYB
We investigate how to get inside the bios of this Intel NUC computer. It might be a different in every computer. I think it is this computer. ArcoLinux works fine on it.
In our case F2 is what we need to get into the bios.
There is also F7 to update BIOS and F10 to Enter Boot Menu.
We check 2 things:
- can we boot from usb
- is virtualization enabled to be able to have virtualbox later
What you see beneath is the bootmenu F10. That is needed if you have your usb plugged in and want to boot from USB.
NUC setup
This document show the steps to install and configure 10 Intel NUCs with OS Centos 7 and a Informix 12.10 Database Server.
- NUC 7I7DNKE
- 4 Cores (8T), i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz, 8MB cache
- 32GB 2G x 64-Bit, DDR4-2666 CL15 260-Pin SODIMM
- NVMe OCZ DISK RD400 1 TB SSD
1 Enable remote access
Power on the Intel NUC. Press CTRL+P at the splash screen to enter MEBx BIOS.
Change the default password. The default password is «admin». The new password has the comply with the following policies:
- At least 8 characters.
- At least one digit character (eg. 0, 1, … 9).
- At least one non-alpha-numeric character (e.g. !, $, 😉 excluding colon, comma or quotes.
- At least one lower-case letter (a, b, c, d. ).
- At least one upper case letter (A, B, C, D. ).
- At least 8 characters
The AMT system uses DHCP to configure an IP Address.
If you do not have a DHCP server you can configure a static IP within Intel AMT Configuration > Network Setup > TCP/IP Settings.
An then enable the Activate Network Access indicator.
Now the Web interface is available at port 16992, use a browser with the URL to connect to the interface:
The user is «admin». Log in once to verify that it is available and properly configured.
To connect via VNC it is necessary to use a VNC viewer that supports Intel AMT KVM mode as VNC Viewer Plus. Don’t use TLS encryption to establish the connection.
1.1 Enable Display Emulation
Enable the «Display Emulation» option with the value «Headless displya emulation» on the BIOS to allow the video output for the VNC connection.
- Press «F2» on init screen
- Go to Advanced option menu
- Go to Devices option menu
- Select «Headless display emulation»
Finally select the key «F10» to «Save and Exit».
2 Setup Legacy BIOS
By default the UEFI BIOS is active at the system. In order to allow an installation from a non UEFI Bootable disk, change to Legacy BIOS at Setup.
Enter to the BIOS panel configuration by click on Setup option on the top of the right when the server power on.
Enable the Legacy boot and disable UEFI boot option.
3 Install CentOS 7
Donwload the ISO of the CentOS ISO latest minimal version and create a USB disk bootable with the image downloaded. Insert the USB on the machine and Power On.
3.1 Partitions
For a 1TB disk we propose this configuration
| Partition | Type | Size |
|---|---|---|
| / | ext4 | 24GB |
| swap | swap | 2GB |
| /var | ext4 | 24GB |
| /home | ext4 | 24GB |
| /data | ext4 | The remaining size (900GB aprox.) |
3.2 Configue the network
Configure the network settings with nmtui utility.
3.3 Set the hostname
Choose the hostname for the machine (nuc01).
3.4 Upgrade
Upgrade to the last version the installed packages using the instruccion:
3.5 Upgrade Kernel
3.5.1 Checking Installed Kernel Version
When we install a distribution it includes a certain version of the Linux kernel. To show the current version installed on our system we can do:
3.5.2 Upgrading Kernel in CentOS 7
To enable the ELRepo repository on CentOS 7 , do:
Once the repository has been enabled, you can use the following command to list the available kernel.related packages:
Next, install the latest mainline stable kernel:
Finally, reboot your machine to apply the latest kernel, and then select latest kernel from the menu as shown.
Login as root, and run following command to check the kernel version:
3.5.3 Set Default Kernel Version in GRUB
To make the newly-installed version the default boot option, you will have to modify the GRUB configuration as follows:
Open and edit the file /etc/default/grub and set GRUB_DEFAULT=0 . This means that the first kernel in the GRUB initial screen will be used as default.
Next, run the following command to recreate the kernel configuration.
Reboot the server to use the lastest kernel
Reboot («init 6» or «shutdown -r now») and verify that the latest kernel is now being used by default.
3.5.4 Removing the Old Kernel
Search for the old kernel (the output can be different depending the source installation)
and remove the packages for the old version as for example
3.6 Disable Firewall and Selinux
We recommend disable the Firewall and Selinux in order to make easy the configuration of services. This option must be adapted to the security requirements of your environment.
To disable Firewall type:
To disable Selinux edit the file /etc/selinux/config and modify the SELINUX attribute with the value disable:
4 Enabling VNC in vPro NUC Servers
To enable the standard VNC connection you can install the package wsmancli. There is more information in this site Intel AMT on Linux for remote control/fencing and here How to remotely access Intel AMT KVM from Linux desktop
You can use the following shell to activate the VNC access via vPro. Modify the
- [AMT_IP_ADDRESS]: The IP of the AMT service configured on the previous section.
- [AMT_PASSWORD]: The password for «admin» user of the AMT service configured on the previous section.
For the VNC connection we propose the password ‘P*ssw0rd’, ‘P@ssw0rd’ or ‘In9tel@p’, you can use another one but there are requirements that must have the key, as for example a 8 character long, mixcase, must contains numbers and at least one special symbol.
Copy this shell in another server (not on the NUC) with connection to the NUC via ethernet using the IP [AMT_IP_ADDRESS] in order to activate the service.
Execution of the shell
This shell must be executed from a external server, not on the NUC.
5 Install additional software
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| bc | The shell calculator. |
| gcc | The C compiler. |
| git | Git distributed version control system. |
| libaio | Kernel AIO required to allow Informix KIO. |
| iotop | List the processes that are performing I/O, alongwith the disk bandwidth they are using |
| dstat | ore user-friendly version of iostat |
To install a package login as root and use yum
6 Setting timezone and date
This section will demonstrate how to setting Up NTP (Network Time Protocol) Server in RHEL/CentOS 7 .
Network Time Protocol – NTP- is a protocol which runs over port 123 UDP at Transport Layer and allows computers to synchronize time over networks for an accurate time. While time is passing by, computers internal clocks tend to drift which can lead to inconsistent time issues, especially on servers and clients logs files or if you want to replicate servers resources or databases.
6.1 Prerequisites
Before anything else, you need to assign the correct time zone.
To get the current configuration
To get the list of all the available time zones:
To set your time zone you can use command below: (e.g. Madrid)
6.2 Install and configure NTP daemon
You can install and configure NTP server on CentOS/RHEL 7 and automatically synchronize time with the closest geographically peers available for your server location by using NTP Public Pool Time Servers list.
NTP server package is provided by default from official CentOS /RHEL 7 repositories and can be installed by issuing the following command.
The NTP configuration is in the /etc/ntp.conf file.
6.3 Add Firewall Rules and Start NTP Daemon
If you’ve configured the firewall you must allow UDP traffic for the NTP service in order to communicate with the NTP pool
Once the installation completes, start the service and configure it so it starts automatically each time the server boots. Use the following commands to manage the service.
6.4 Verify Server Time Sync
After NTP daemon has been started, wait a few minutes for the server to synchronize time with its pool list servers, then run the following commands to verify NTP peers synchronization status and your system time.