arm64 support?

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings folks;

I asked about arm64 support about a month back and basically got a not
much answer. I have a pair of the 4GB rockchip rock64's that I'd love to
replace a pi3b with.

I tried to update the kernel from one of ayufan's repo's yesterday,
seeing an initramfs error go by as it was being updated, and bricked
that sd card, getting several kernel panic reports as it fails to boot
now.

So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to install
if there actually is one now?

Cheers, Gene Heskett

[Alan Corey]

Well, that's why I stick with Pis, because they're easy and fast
enough. You could look into debootstrap
https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap if you feel like an adventure. I
did it once on a phone. Or maybe you should use cdebootstrap
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=cdebootstrap

Drivers for specific hardware will probably be an issue with the
Rockchips unless they're now available from Debian. Maybe you can add
a Rockchip repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list or enter it as
part of the installation process.

I think you just choose arm64 by using the --arch=ARCH option when you
start debootstrap.

I don't know of a ready to go image, sorry.

Post by Gene Heskett
Greetings folks;
I asked about arm64 support about a month back and basically got a not
much answer. I have a pair of the 4GB rockchip rock64's that I'd love to
replace a pi3b with.
I tried to update the kernel from one of ayufan's repo's yesterday,
seeing an initramfs error go by as it was being updated, and bricked
that sd card, getting several kernel panic reports as it fails to boot
now.
So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to install
if there actually is one now?
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

[Gene Heskett]

Post by Alan Corey
Well, that's why I stick with Pis, because they're easy and fast
enough. You could look into debootstrap
https://wiki.debian.org/Debootstrap if you feel like an adventure. I
did it once on a phone. Or maybe you should use cdebootstrap
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=cdebootstrap
Drivers for specific hardware will probably be an issue with the
Rockchips unless they're now available from Debian. Maybe you can add
a Rockchip repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list or enter it as
part of the installation process.
I think you just choose arm64 by using the --arch=ARCH option when you
start debootstrap.
I don't know of a ready to go image, sorry.

Thats what I was afraid of. All of the rt-preempt or rtai flavor kernels
for the pi have a dangerous, very nasty habit, I think because
everything BUT the SPI has to fight the traffic jam at the single
internal usb-2 port everything else has to use as a path to the
inside/outside porthole. This is nuts, but its boot dependent in that if
you find yourself with an unusable keyboard/mouse, it can usually be 99%
fixed with another reboot or 4. When its iffy, it just throws away
random events from either device, so if it misses a keyup, it leaves the
machine moving until you can hit another key or make another mouse click
to get its attention. That can be a right pain in the ass when the
machine has several horsepower, breaking tooling or whatever it hits.

The rock64, which has enough ram, and is many times faster than the pi's,
perhaps 50x at times, gets rid of all those problems. But I can't just
swap it out because the kernels SPI is glaciaLLy slow, the pi's runs 4x
faster with a userspace driver, skipping the kernel's module altogether.
And the machine interface is an SPI port carved out of gpio. It needs to
write 32 bit packets at 42 megabaud, and read the same 32 bit replies
from the interface card at 25 megabaud to duplicate the pi's
performance. I am told the kernels SPI is maxed out at about 10
megabaud. That won't get the job done. So I wait, till the support
arrives. And there doesn't appear to be any real interest, sadly.

Thanks for the update. Its not what I wanted to read, but it is what it
is.

Post by Alan Corey

Post by Gene Heskett
Greetings folks;
I asked about arm64 support about a month back and basically got a
not much answer. I have a pair of the 4GB rockchip rock64's that I'd
love to replace a pi3b with.
I tried to update the kernel from one of ayufan's repo's yesterday,
seeing an initramfs error go by as it was being updated, and bricked
that sd card, getting several kernel panic reports as it fails to
boot now.
So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to
install if there actually is one now?
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

Cheers, Gene Heskett
The above content, added by Maurice E. Heskett, is Copyright 2018 by
Maurice E. Heskett.

[Paul Wise]

Post by Gene Heskett
So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to install
if there actually is one now?

Debian doesn't support images for ARM. We only have live images for
x86 desktop and installed images for x86 cloud platforms.

If the Debian installer builds for arm64 from stretch or sid don't
support the rock64, then you can manually do it with debootstrap or
qemu-debootstrap (from qemu-user-static), as Alan mentions.

https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

You could also build your own custom images with one of the *many*
image build tools that exist:

https://wiki.debian.org/SystemBuildTools

[Jeffrey Walton]

Post by Gene Heskett
I asked about arm64 support about a month back and basically got a not
much answer. I have a pair of the 4GB rockchip rock64's that I'd love to
replace a pi3b with.
...
So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to install
if there actually is one now?

Usually the board manufacturer provides images for their boards. You
should probably try the manufacturers site first.

Linaro has some stable images for Aarch64. I've been running Linaro on
2 or 3 of my Aarch64 dev boards, including a LeMaker HiKey and a
Pine64.

Jeff

[Gene Heskett]

Post by Jeffrey Walton

Post by Gene Heskett
I asked about arm64 support about a month back and basically got a
not much answer. I have a pair of the 4GB rockchip rock64's that I'd
love to replace a pi3b with.
...
So I am wondering where I should go looking for an arm64 image to
install if there actually is one now?

Usually the board manufacturer provides images for their boards. You
should probably try the manufacturers site first.
Linaro has some stable images for Aarch64. I've been running Linaro on
2 or 3 of my Aarch64 dev boards, including a LeMaker HiKey and a
Pine64.
Jeff

Thanks Jeff. Not laying hand on the good book, but I think Linaro is one
of the links on the rockchip site. I'll recheck tomorrow after I finish
an arbor for a CBN wheel so I can sharpen HSS tooling for my lathe.

Cheers, Gene Heskett