SPI not getting enabled in Raspberry Pi 4 with custom-built Linux kernel

Question

I have built Linux Kernel 5.10.36-v8 using Buildroot and using it into my Raspberry Pi 4B for the past few weeks. I recently wanted to enable SPI ports on the Raspberry Pi and followed the instructions in this link: https://elinux.org/RPi_SPI and modified my boot/config.txt. Unfortunately, I do not see a /dev/spidev0.x entry. I am not sure what I am missing here. I added an extra UART by the same method and that works perfectly fine, as I can see a /dev/ttyAMA1 appearing when I rebuild and load the kernel.

FYI, This is the content of my config.txt file:

# Please note that this is only a sample, we recommend you to change it to fit
# your needs.
# You should override this file using a post-build script.
# See http://buildroot.org/manual.html#rootfs-custom
# and http://elinux.org/RPiconfig for a description of config.txt syntax

# We always use the same names, the real used variant is selected by
# BR2_PACKAGE_RPI_FIRMWARE_{DEFAULT,X,CD} choice
start_file=start.elf
fixup_file=fixup.dat

kernel=Image

# To use an external initramfs file
#initramfs rootfs.cpio.gz

# Disable overscan assuming the display supports displaying the full resolution
# If the text shown on the screen disappears off the edge, comment this out
disable_overscan=1

# How much memory in MB to assign to the GPU on Pi models having
# 256, 512 or 1024 MB total memory
gpu_mem_256=100
gpu_mem_512=100
gpu_mem_1024=100

# fixes rpi (3B, 3B+, 3A+, 4B and Zero W) ttyAMA0 serial console
dtoverlay=miniuart-bt

# enable 64bits support
arm_64bit=1

# Enable Uart-5
enable_uart=1
dtoverlay=uart5

# Enable I2C
dtparam=i2c_arm=on

# Enable SPI0 with 1 CS
dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=spi0-1cs

# Enable SPI1 with 1 CS
dtoverlay=spi1-3cs

The kernel config file has these entries:

CONFIG_SPI=y
CONFIG_SPI_BCM2835=m
CONFIG_SPI_BCM2835AUX=m
CONFIG_SPI_GPIO=m
CONFIG_SPI_SPIDEV=m
CONFIG_SPI_SLAVE=y

Also my \overlays folder has the built spi0-1cs.dtbo type files and so I assume that it gets built into my final image. But I don't see any entry in /sys/bus/spi/devices or /sys/class/spi_master or spi_slave.

When I install Raspbian lite version on my SD card and try doing the same change in boot/config.txt, I can see the spidev0.x and spidev1.x appearing in /dev directory. So it is quite apparent that I am missing some trivial step while building my own kernel & filesystem using buildroot. Can someone please guide me through this?

Answer 1

You might want to consider using the "official" documentation rather than documentation derived from the official docs. I don't know much about building kernels, but the rpi-update utility may serve your purposes as well as building the kernel yourself.

Answer 2

The issue got resolved. The default setting of buildroot did not enable the following configuration:

BR2_ROOTFS_DEVICE_CREATION_DYNAMIC_MDEV=y

This was causing the spidev modules to not load, even when they were built in the kernel. After adding the above configuration and rebuilding the kernel, the /dev/spidev0.x and /dev/spidev1.x appeared.

I got help from Issues tab in Github repository of Raspberry pi and here is the Issues link, in case more details are needed on how I figured it out.