[Arm-netbook] Rebuilding official OS images?

[Matt Campbell]

Hi,

Are there scripts somewhere for building the official OS images for the
A20 card, from official distro package repositories, using debootstrap
or the equivalent tool for other distros?

I think it's important that the official OS images aren't just cobbled
together by one person, with no one else knowing how to do it; in other
words, the build process should be documented, reproducible, and
ideally, fully automated.

Thanks,
Matt

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Hi,
Are there scripts somewhere for building the official OS images for the A20
card, from official distro package repositories, using debootstrap or the
equivalent tool for other distros?

i've been following various instructions online. typically (and
rather unhelpfully - see discussions dating back several years) the
quotes normal quotes way is to create a quotes disk image quotes. you
can tell i'm not very impressed with this practice.

I think it's important that the official OS images aren't just cobbled
together by one person, with no one else knowing how to do it; in other
words, the build process should be documented, reproducible, and ideally,
fully automated.

i have such a huge amount to do already that i'm going to need help
doing that. i've outlined some of the process in the updates for the
two OSes i've done recently.

l.

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[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Hi,
Are there scripts somewhere for building the official OS images for the A20
card, from official distro package repositories, using debootstrap or the
equivalent tool for other distros?

i've been following various instructions online. typically (and
rather unhelpfully - see discussions dating back several years) the
quotes normal quotes way is to create a quotes disk image quotes. you
can tell i'm not very impressed with this practice.

A lot of the Allwinner chips require an sd card image. You may well
find that the basis of the Cubietruck image will work. The Debian CD maitainers
are fairly appropriate. Allwinner may also require FEL loading whihc is non-standard:
I'm assuming that u-boot should work for you.

An unmodified Debian image built in the same way as there are images built
for beagleboard / cubietruck would be useful and achievable, I'd have thought.

Note also that Debian are working hard towards fully reproducible builds.

Andy C

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

I think it's important that the official OS images aren't just cobbled
together by one person, with no one else knowing how to do it; in other
words, the build process should be documented, reproducible, and ideally,
fully automated.

i have such a huge amount to do already that i'm going to need help
doing that. i've outlined some of the process in the updates for the
two OSes i've done recently.
l.
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[Matt Campbell]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i have such a huge amount to do already that i'm going to need help
doing that. i've outlined some of the process in the updates for the
two OSes i've done recently.

I'm willing to help with Debian. That's the distro I know best, and I've
hacked on image build scripts before. But of course I won't have an A20
card until they ship in March. If I'm going to buy an A20 board before
then, should it be the Cubieboard2, the Cubietruck, one of the Olimex
boards, or something else?

Matt

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Post by Matt Campbell

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
i have such a huge amount to do already that i'm going to need help
doing that. i've outlined some of the process in the updates for the
two OSes i've done recently.

I'm willing to help with Debian. That's the distro I know best, and I've
hacked on image build scripts before. But of course I won't have an A20 card
until they ship in March. If I'm going to buy an A20 board before then,
should it be the Cubieboard2, the Cubietruck, one of the Olimex boards, or
something else?

cubieboard2 or cubietruck. please don't buy from olimex, it will be
endorsement of tsvetan's ongoing lack of understanding of the
importance of GPL compliance. which he is on public record as stating
"he doesn't understand and is fed up with people fussing about
proprietary blobs".

l.

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[Elena ``of Valhalla'']

Are there scripts somewhere for building the official OS images for the A20
card, from official distro package repositories, using debootstrap or the
equivalent tool for other distros?

Debian has support for a number of A20 boards in the official
installer:

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner

the EOMA68 board is still not supported, but if a device tree blob is
available it is possible to use it with a bit of manual work

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner#Installing_on_systems_that_are_not_supported_out_of_the_box

You do need a serial interface (the debian installer runs on it, because
it's the common denominator of all supported boards, and autodetecting
the output device wasn't trivial): I don't know if it is easily
available on the EOMA68 A20 board.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Elena ``of Valhalla''

Post by Elena ``of Valhalla''

Are there scripts somewhere for building the official OS images for the A20
card, from official distro package repositories, using debootstrap or the
equivalent tool for other distros?

Debian has support for a number of A20 boards in the official
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner
the EOMA68 board is still not supported, but if a device tree blob is
available it is possible to use it with a bit of manual work

thanks for mentioning this, elena. wookey asked me abouuut.... 18
months ago. the issue is not that it's impossible to make one: i use
the cubieboard2 one with very little modification and i belieeeve i
dropped a copy of it here:
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner/a20/boot/

just updated that to add the 4.7 kernel config and devicetree

so that's not a problem... the devicetree exists to get booting....
the issue is that the *linux kernel doesn't support what's needed*.

and what's needed is described here:

http://elinux.org/Device_tree_future
https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/11/10/593

once that's become mainline, and is proven and is fully supported by
both the linux kernel *AND U-BOOT*, *then* and *only* then can we
submit a device-tree *SERIES* of entries for the linux kernel (and
u-boot).

the problem is basically that we have absolutely no idea what hardware
the EOMA68 computer cards find themselves in.... until they have read
the EOMA68 I2C EEPROM at address 0x51 and obtained the "chassis
identification type".

the hardware side is documented (sparsely) in the EOMA68 specification:
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#Requirements_for_I2C

the software side has a lot that still needs to be done.

l.

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