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
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Matt Campbell mattcampbell@pobox.com wrote:
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.
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 07:26:00PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 6:03 PM, Matt Campbell mattcampbell@pobox.com wrote:
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
[amacater@galactic.demon.co.uk / amacater@debian.org]
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.
arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook Send large attachments to arm-netbook@files.phcomp.co.uk
On 7/29/2016 1:26 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
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
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 9:52 PM, Matt Campbell mattcampbell@pobox.com wrote:
On 7/29/2016 1:26 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
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.
On 2016-07-29 at 12:03:58 -0500, Matt Campbell wrote:
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_t...
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.
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Elena ``of Valhalla'' elena.valhalla@gmail.com wrote:
On 2016-07-29 at 12:03:58 -0500, Matt Campbell wrote:
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
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_fo...
the software side has a lot that still needs to be done.
l.
arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk
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Andrew M.A. Cater -
Elena ``of Valhalla'' -
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton -
Matt Campbell