Gentoo on Helios64

xaviermiller · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:56 am Post subject: Gentoo on Helios64

Hi!

I got a Helios64 those last weeks, and I am planning to install Gentoo on it.

For now, the documentation at Kobol is "work in progress".

I will use this thread to provide status on my work. If it will succeed, I will need to update the Gentoo Wiki too

Contributors are welcome!
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 3:56 pm Post subject:

xaviermiller,

I've been tempted but I thought in was still vapourware as the web page only ever says Preorder Now.
I would really like 16G RAM and hardware support for KVMs too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

xaviermiller · Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2020 9:24 am Post subject:

What I have now
- armbian on EMMC
- Gentoo on SSD, running in a chroot hosted by armbian

The next days, I will copy the armbian kernel binaries and adapt the boot script to run Gentoo, then compile gentoo-sources with the necessary kernel patches.

I can easily switch from distro by changing the symlink "boot" between "boot.armbian" and "boot.gentoo" on the EMMC.
If the system is stuck, I can start the system in recovery mode, mount the EMMC and change the symlink, then reboot.
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

enoid · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2020 Posts: 3

I also got a Helios64 but unfortunately haven't had much time to play around with it, seeing as this turned out to be a busier time of the year then usual. I tried the Armbian releases, but somehow it doesn't feel right. I never liked really liked Debian distros at all, the deb system makes me feel I'm not in control if something breaks. I know, you break it yourself by upgrading (unstable) stuff. So I've been looking for a more 'stable' system. I also tried a FreeBSD build for it and it looks promising, especially when in the future arm64 becomes a tier1 candidate. However my main distro has always been Gentoo (since around ~2002) as it makes me feel more in control. If something breaks, most of the time it easily fixable or reverted.

So, some things I did do/try:
- Followed the Rpi3/4 install guide for a basic set up for Gentoo on the SD-card
- Compiled U-boot from source (with the patches from kobol)
- Compiled the 5.9 kernel with patches and config from Armbian
- Used and edited the Armbian U-boot config files to make a boot.cmd

After some tweaking of the command line stuff in U-boot it seems to work at first sight, but after loading the kernel it doesn't give any output at all so I have no idea where it fails (I know Armbian also doesn't show any console output over USB until it has booted, after that it uses ttyS2). So is there a way to get early output on arm? I think I read something about earlycon on arm instead of early_printk? Or do you have to pass/add some memory address to U-boot to activate serial USB output? Or do you have to use the UART pins to get early serial output? (I haven't tried/looked into it yet.)

I'm eagerly following this thread to see your progress, so keep us updated

xaviermiller · Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:48 pm Post subject:

Hi,

I have a working Gentoo on my helios64

I used that method :
- boot latest armbian and install it on eMMC (nand-sata-install)
- install an arm64 stage3 on sda
- for the kernel I use gentoo-sources + almost all armbian patches
- on the eMMC, rename "boot" to "boot.armbian", copy it to "boot.gentoo" and create a symlink "boot" to "boot.gentoo".
- my boot.cmd script is:

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558

Helios64 is a rockchip SBC. It seems that rockchip SBCs require /boot and / to be wrapped inside android images with make_ext4fs.

Why can't rockchip SBCs just support raw GPT partitions?

At least, raspberry pi doesn't punish users with complications. Perhaps, I should stick to simpler SBCs or AMD64 machines.

xaviermiller · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 7:27 pm Post subject:

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558

xaviermiller · Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:24 pm Post subject:

this is not a nanopi...
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558

How did you compile and configure u-boot and other bootloader files for Helois64?

Most manufacturers don't really tell us how to build and install bootloader manually.

xaviermiller · Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:53 pm Post subject:

For now I use armian's UBOOT, until the Kobol wiki is completely up-to-date. AFAIK the sources are available and compilable for the Helios64 but I don't care now, I don't want to brick the bootloader.

Then I have my personal boot script in /boot that loads a Gentoo kernel + armbian patches and a full Gentoo system.

EDIT: here are the sources for U-BOOT
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558