Rock64: Porting Arch Linux to a new SBC

[tllim]

Thanks to Michiel on his good article on step by step porting mainline Arch Linux on ROCK64. ... TL Lim, PINE64 founder

https://me.m01.eu/blog/2017/12/rock64-arch-linux/

[sdrider]

Dead link. Very interested in a Rock64 board as the next step in my search for ever more powerful ARM platform boards for hobby usage. Have loved the odroid-xu4 so far, was thinking Rock64 might be my next jump. But without solid AL ARM support, it's a non-starter for me.

Dead blog links and one guys github repository from six months ago (ayufan) does not a supported platform make.

I know this community volunteers a lot of it's time to support various boards, so I'm certainly not demanding anything. But if there's interest from those who know how, what would it take to get Rock64 on the official support list, with a working image under the archlinuxarm platform home page?

Seems we have the founders attention here, so if it's a matter of a couple of free boards for developers to hack on, I'm sure that could be arranged.

[WarheadsSE]

Link's not dead for me.

Also, I have one. I've just had my hands very full with work, holidays, and conferences

[darthyoh]

Hi,

Just a noobs question : as I can read in the excellent article and in the https://github.com/m01/rock64-arch-linux-build one of the first thing is to build the u-boot using ayufan's script.

In fact, I recently saw that it's possible to flash the u-boot directly onto the SPI flash memory, following these simple instructions found here : http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/NOOB#Flashing_u-boot_to_SPI_Flash

If the u-boot is in the SPI flash memory, assuming I prepared a sd Card and partition it as required by the RK3328, format the boot and linux-root partitions, can I boot directly on it like that (after extracting the AArch64 generic Arch Linux image) ?

[WarheadsSE]

I hope to find time to do proper documentation / support in the near future, but I can't provide a deadline at the moment. I've just returned from FOSDEM, so I have a lot to catch up on.

[sdrider]

Thanks for the update, WarheadsSE. Link works for me now - weird that it didn't before.

I'm still very interested in a Rock64 board. It seems it's doable today by following in others footsteps, but certainly not as straightforward as other boards on the ALARM home page. I may pick a board in the near future anyway and if I get some time to hack on it, see what I can get going. Worst case I run into a brick wall and shelve it for a bit until it gets official support.

[nsollars]

If someone wants to look into it there seems to be a couple of issues with the latest packages in arch that causes uboot build to fail with the main one looking to be aarch64 binutils,

aarch64-linux-gnu-ld.bfd: arch/arm/lib/crt0_aarch64_efi.o: relocation R_AARCH64_ABS16 against `EFI_SUBSYSTEM' can not be used when making a shared object
make[3]: *** [scripts/Makefile.lib:382: lib/efi_loader/helloworld.so] Error 1
make[2]: *** [scripts/Makefile.build:425: lib/efi_loader] Error 2
make[1]: *** [Makefile:1278: lib] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/nsollars/build/rock64-arch-linux-build/u-boot'
make: *** [Makefile.uboot.mk:12: out/u-boot/idbloader.img] Error 2

seems only to affect the ayufan u-boot codebase as building a mainline uboot does infact finish without problems.

The other minor issue is with the current dtc package.

more info see discussion,

https://github.com/m01/rock64-arch-linux-build/issues/3

Nige

[WarheadsSE]

Please attempt to use our officially provided toolchains, seen at https://archlinuxarm.org/wiki/Distcc_Cross-Compiling

I wasn't aware that upstream was actually shipping `aarch64-linux-gnu-*` packages.