gentoo on tablets

Adel Ahmed · Veteran Joined: 21 Sep 2012 Posts: 1553

I'm interested in installing gentoo on a crappy chinese tablet(low end), then using that tablet as a wifi repeater(maybe install some other servers as well)
where do I start?
I'm aware drivers are gonna give me hell, I was more interested in booting gentoo on the tablet in the first place(network boot?), If I can reach the stage where I can connect to wifi/bluetooth and run an ssh server that would be great.

I'm not trying this out for the functional outcome(I know I can buy me a repeater or a raspberry pi) I'm trying this out for a. educational purposes(I've worked with the ARM arch before b. if things go well I might install gentoo on my mobile phone and main tablet

thanks

lost+found · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 7:09 pm Post subject:

If your chip is an Allwinner SoC, I think the best information is here: sunxi...
...and start cross-compiling with Gentoo.

The first challenge is to boot a kernel, maybe with just busybox. I tried it some months ago without much luck. I still think it would be fun to have Gentoo on my tablet, or KDE Plasma Active.

Good luck!!

lost+found · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 6:19 pm Post subject:

Hey, I gave it another try... I was able to boot a kernel + busybox now, and see some action (the output) on screen.

I ended up in using FEL/USB boot, and mounting the root partition from SDcard. I'm not going to ruin nand yet!

Maybe a useful tip: reuse the original script.bin from your device if you can (probably on nanda), and run: