Arch Linux on NVIDIA SHIELD

[Gnurou]

Hi everyone,

I got Arch Linux ARM and KDE to boot on a slightly-modified 3.11 kernel and thought that could be of interest to the community:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAvXLqPKxow

The user-space is an almost unmodified Trimslice image. I just twiddled with some configuration files (esp. X) and then everything just run. Actually at this point I am considering submitting and maintaining an official port for NVIDIA-released consumer devices (that would include SHIELD and the upcoming Tegra Note in a first time). An official port for more modern Tegra 4 devices would be beneficial IMHO, since Tegra 2-based Trimslice does not support e.g. NEON instructions.

That's where I'm a little bit lost. I have been through all the website but couldn't find how I can compile and bootstrap my own ARM image with specific compilation flags. Is there some documentation I missed? How are base root images like Trimslice produced in a first time?

Thanks for any useful information - I'd love to get that port moving forward and show how Tegra devices can run on 100% free software!

[e8hffff]

Has anyone shared a image of this pre-constructed?

[Gnurou]

Hey, sorry for the very delayed reply, I wasn't subscribed to this topic.

There was only little interest shown for this (which is understandable since SHIELD is not widely-available), but if you want I can make a minimal image available somewhere with just the customizations needed to take advantage of SHIELD's feature. Now the same image could also boot on Tegra Note 7, so hopefully it will get more people interested.

[WarheadsSE]

A generous user has donated a Tegra4-based HP Slate 21, so we now have another device that can benefit from your work, if I can tweak out the boot sequence.

[Gnurou]

Great. My main concern is how can I submit images/packages and build the image from scratch? So far I have been using the Trimslice image as a base, along with a mainline Linux.

With the Jetson K1 also being supported by mainline, it might be interesting to have a port of ALArm for newer Tegra devices, or even for all ARM boards supported by the multi_v7 kernel config.

[WarheadsSE]

pacstrap is part of arch-install-tools, and is for the basis of how we make images. That, plus arch-chroot is all that we use for creating rootfs tarballs.

[Gnurou]

Thanks. Am I correct in assuming there is currently no image for ARM boards that support the multi_v7 kernel configuration?

Doing an image for Tegra 4/Tegra K1 would be nice, but it would be even nicer (and could attract more people) if the same image could also be useful to other ARM devices that can boot with this configuration.

[kmihelich]

We have a website for a reason.
http://archlinuxarm.org/developers/downloads

We have had a multi-platform armv7 kernel for almost a year, and there is no such thing as "porting" to anything. Build a kernel, drop it into the rootfs for the appropriate architecture, done.

[Gnurou]

Great, that's exactly what I was looking for. I don't understand how I missed that page - sorry about that.