Please note the Tinker Board is not officially supported by ArchLinux ARM so follow this post at your own risk.
ASUS also made the Asus Chromebook Flip C100P which has the same Rockchip on it, so I've used that image to get ArchLinux on the board.
This board has an unusual way to boot up, not configurable like the C100P.
Thankfully, the ASUS Page has a TinkerOS_DEBIAN image you can `dd` right away to an SD Card.
They suggest 8GB but their image creates 2 partitions: one 64MB FAT and one 2GB ext4 so actually 4GB card is enough.
Insert your SD card in your laptop, and check where it is typing `lsblk` which shows all drivers paths.
In my case it's `/dev/mmcblk0` where, if there are partitions, shows up as `/dev/mmcblkXpN`
Once you are sure about how your sd card is reachable, run the following remembering that such card will be fully erased.
Replace `/dev/mmcblkX` with your card address (without including possible partitions)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# umount whatever is mounted automatically
sudo umount /dev/mmcblkX*
# be sure /dev/mmcblkX is where the SD card is
sudo dd if=TinkerOS_DEBIAN.img of=/dev/mmcblkX bs=8192
')
At this point you can already boot the OS provided by ASUS or skip right away and erase the second partition.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# bear in mind it could be /dev/mmcblkXp2 or /dev/sdb2
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblkXp2
')
You can now download the veyron image and extract it into the mounted partition
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
curl -LO http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-veyron-latest.tar.gz
sudo mount /dev/mmcblkXp2 /mnt
sudo tar -zxf ArchLinuxARM-veyron-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt
sync
sudo umount /mnt
')
Depending on your SD card, this process could take few seconds up to 5 minutes.
That's it, you can boot ArchLinux on the ASUS Tinker Board!
First Boot and Network
Once booted, you can login as root/root and enable the 1GB ethernet linking it up and using dhcpcd
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# know all network addresses
ip addr
# set eth0 up
ip link set eth0 up
# wait 5 seconds ... then
dhcpcd eth0
')
After that, you can already `pacman -Syu` but do not flash the new kernel once asked, or you'll have to start this procedure from scratch.
Does It Work ?
Good question. Neither Weston nor Xorg seems to be able to start. I've used veyron-libgl and armsoc driver but these were not already installed so maybe with just Mesa in it works, but probably not Hardware Accelerated.
I've just got this board so I'll play more around with either ArchLinux or their linaro they configured as Debian, and see if this board is actually cool, regardless it's based on 32bit outdated chip, or yet another pointless Raspberry Pi competitor.
After all, what is power, without drivers to control it?
Best Regards