Petalinux 2018.3 - SetScene tasks all failing, build takes long time.

[epeach]

When running petalinux-build for a Zynq project, all the SetScene tasks fail with messages like:

WARNING: Setscene task (/opt/xilinx/petalinux/components/yocto/source/arm/layers/core/meta/recipes-support/db/db_5.3.28.bb:do_package_qa_setscene) failed with exit code '1' - real task will be run instead

(and many others with similar wording)

This causes the build to take really long time, as presumably it has to re-build all these resources. Previously, on PetaLinux 2018.2, the SetScene tasks all worked fine, and the build process only took about 20 minutes. Now, it takes closer to 1.5 hours. The problem does not appear when building for a ZynqMP project; only Zynq-7000.

Why might the process fail on one machine and not the other?

Notes:

• Using CentOS 7
• All resources used are current to 2018.3
• My user has read, write and execute permissions to the SState cache, the petalinux_projects folder, and the petalinux installation folder.
• The new build machine has, as far as I can tell, the same packages installed as the old machine.

Steps to Reproduce:

$ cd /data/petalinux_projects
$ umask 022
$ petalinux-create -t project --template zynq -n ExampleProject
$ cd ExampleProject/
$ petalinux-config --get-hw-description=/path/to/ZYNQ_HDF_FOLDER/

## In the petalinux-config MenuConfig, set the following settings:
## * Yocto Settings:
##    * Add pre-mirror url => file:///data/sstate-rel-v2018.3/downloads
##    * Local sstate feeds settings => local sstate feeds url => file:///data/sstate-rel-v2018.3
##    * Network sstate feeds URL => (set to blank)

$ petalinux-build

The following messages get displayed:

[INFO] building project
[INFO] sourcing bitbake
INFO: bitbake petalinux-user-image
Parsing recipes: 100% |###############################################################################| Time: 0:01:02
Parsing of 2569 .bb files complete (0 cached, 2569 parsed). 3445 targets, 149 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
NOTE: Resolving any missing task queue dependencies
Initialising tasks: 100% |############################################################################| Time: 0:00:06
Checking sstate mirror object availability: 100% |####################################################| Time: 0:00:02
NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
WARNING: Logfile for failed setscene task is /data/petalinux_projects/ExampleProject/build/tmp/work/cortexa9hf-neon-xilinx-linux-gnueabi/db/1_5.3.28-r1/temp/log.do_package_qa_setscene.82609
WARNING: Setscene task (/opt/xilinx/petalinux/components/yocto/source/arm/layers/core/meta/recipes-support/db/db_5.3.28.bb:do_package_qa_setscene) failed with exit code '1' - real task will be run instead
WARNING: Logfile for failed setscene task is /data/petalinux_projects/ExampleProject/build/tmp/work/cortexa9hf-neon-xilinx-linux-gnueabi/dbus-test/1.10.20-r0/temp/log.do_package_qa_setscene.82610
WARNING: Logfile for failed setscene task is /data/petalinux_projects/ExampleProject/build/tmp/work/cortexa9hf-neon-xilinx-linux-gnueabi/gawk/4.1.4-r0/temp/log.do_populate_sysroot_setscene.82611
WARNING: Setscene task (/opt/xilinx/petalinux/components/yocto/source/arm/layers/core/meta/recipes-core/dbus/dbus-test_1.10.20.bb:do_package_qa_setscene) failed with exit code '1' - real task will be run instead
WARNING: Setscene task (/opt/xilinx/petalinux/components/yocto/source/arm/layers/core/meta/recipes-extended/gawk/gawk_4.1.4.bb:do_populate_sysroot_setscene) failed with exit code '1' - real task will be run instead
WARNING: Logfile for failed setscene task is /data/petalinux_projects/ExampleProject/build/tmp/work/cortexa9hf-neon-xilinx-linux-gnueabi/bash/4.4-r0/temp/log.do_package_qa_setscene.82612
(This goes on for some time)
....
Summary: There were 12 WARNING messages shown.
INFO: Copying Images from deploy to images
INFO: Creating images/linux directory
NOTE: Failed to copy built images to tftp dir: /tftpboot
[INFO] successfully built project

Correct Behavior
I ran the same steps to reproduce on our other derelict server that was configured to use PetaLinux 2018.2 (using an older HDF file, and 2018.2 sstate cache). The following, correct output resulted, and the build was much quicker.

[INFO] building project
[INFO] sourcing bitbake
INFO: bitbake petalinux-user-image
Parsing recipes: 100% |##########################################################################################################################################| Time: 0:01:02
Parsing of 2552 .bb files complete (0 cached, 2552 parsed). 3425 targets, 148 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
NOTE: Resolving any missing task queue dependencies
Initialising tasks: 100% |#######################################################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:06
Checking sstate mirror object availability: 100% |###############################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:03
NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
NOTE: fsbl: compiling from external source tree /opt/xilinx/petalinux/tools/hsm/data/embeddedsw
WARNING: petalinux-user-image-1.0-r0 do_rootfs: The postinstall intercept hook 'update_icon_cache' failed, details in log.do_rootfs
WARNING: petalinux-user-image-1.0-r0 do_rootfs: The postinstall intercept hook 'update_pixbuf_cache' failed, details in log.do_rootfs
WARNING: petalinux-user-image-1.0-r0 do_rootfs: The postinstall intercept hook 'update_gio_module_cache' failed, details in log.do_rootfs
WARNING: petalinux-user-image-1.0-r0 do_rootfs: The postinstall intercept hook 'update_font_cache' failed, details in log.do_rootfs
WARNING: petalinux-user-image-1.0-r0 do_rootfs: [log_check] petalinux-user-image: found 1 warning message in the logfile:
[log_check] warning: %post(sysvinit-inittab-2.88dsf-r10.plnx_zynq7) scriptlet failed, exit status 1

NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 3065 tasks of which 2246 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.

Summary: There were 5 WARNING messages shown.
INFO: Copying Images from deploy to images
INFO: Creating images/linux directory
NOTE: Failed to copy built images to tftp dir: /tftpboot
[INFO] successfully built project

[epeach · Accepted solution]

I seem to have got it working now. The solution appears to be: my user should not have permission to write to the petalinux installation directory.

Suppose:

• My username is 'abc' and I am a member of group 'users'.
• Petalinux tools is installed to /opt/xilinx/petalinux.

Then:

# cd /opt/xilinx
# chown -R root:users petalinux
# chmod -R 755 petalinux                ## (previously it was 775)

---

 Now my build takes 15 minutes instead of an hour. I'm surprised because usually we run into problems when we don't have enough permissions, not when we have too many.