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n1ese
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:04 pm    Post subject: Gentoo on RockPro64? Reply with quote

Anyone running Gentoo on a Pine64 RockPro64?

My Pi 4 2GB experiments just aren't working out. I need to upgrade to at least a 4GB Pi 4. However, I'm leaning towards the RockPro64 4GB because it doesn't cost that much more and has the RK3399 Hex Core with Mali T860MP4 GPU. The RockPro64 is also designed for 12VDC input something I find very attractive and was leaning towards spending $28 on a HAT if I were to go with a Pi 4B 4GB.

Anyway, it technically seems possible to run Gentoo on it. There are images for Ubuntu and various Debian builds that can boot from either the sdcard or eMMC. I was trying to follow one person installing Gentoo using Ubuntu as a base to make a bootable Gentoo sdcard. Unfortunately, reddit gives me a headache and I had a hard time following.

I just need to get a minimal base system booting and I can build the rest of the system from scratch. I remember when we used to build Gentoo from stage2 tarballs. I can settle on Debian but I'd much rather be running Gentoo.

Thoughts anyone? Thanks
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

n1ese,

I'm pretty sure its been done.

Check the wiki page Its listed there.
Also ask in #gentoo-arm on freenode.
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n1ese
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon,

I recognize one name from that list, khaosgrille, he stopped working on it back in 2018 according to posts on the Pine64 forum. He made a very minimal image but it wasn't fully tested and sounds quite rough. I didn't see much else on their forum.

I will ping #gentoo-arm on freenode.

Thanks
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HuskyDog
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PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 4:47 pm    Post subject: Re: Gentoo on RockPro64? Reply with quote

n1ese wrote:
Anyone running Gentoo on a Pine64 RockPro64?


I have just made a start on doing precisely this and have got to the point where I can log in to the Stage 3 image. Here is what I did. It might not be the best approach, but I experimented and it has worked so far for me.

A couple of points to start with:
  • I am only using the serial console.
  • I am booting from a microSD card.

First I downloaded a working image from the Pine website (I user Ubuntu bionic). I dd'd this to my SD card and used it to check that the board was working and that my serial console was OK.

The I put the SD card into my Linux laptop and mounted partition 7 which has the OS on it. I deleted everything except /boot and /lib/modules. I then untared the lasted ARM64 Stage 3 tar ball over the top. This meant that I was still using the crazily complex boot process in partitions 1 to 6 and the existing kernel and grub. I then had to edit a couple of files to be able to log in.

In /etc/shadow I removed the * from the root entry so there was no password. I then set a password once I logged on.

In /etc/inittab I made the following changes:
  • I commented out the seven lines under "TERMINALS" as I am not using the normal screen terminals.
  • Under the "SERIAL CONSOLES" section I uncommented the s1 line (don't think it matters which) and changed it as follows
    Code:
    s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 1500000 ttyS2 vt100

    Note that the serial console is on ttyS2!
  • I commented out the very last line that starts 'f0'. I don't know what it does but it was giving "Respawning too fast" errors and everything seems to work without it

I can now log in and have managed to sync portage from my local mirror.

My eventual aim is to get Xen working on the board, but that is an adventure for another day once I have a solid Gentoo install running.

My biggest beef so far is to observe that arm64 stage 3 tar balls have not been cryptographically signed. There is no DIGESTS.asc file as there is with the builds for all the other platforms (including 32 bit Arm) leaving me nervous as to whether anything has been tampered with.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2020 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

HuskyDog,

Like this on http://distfiles.gentoo.org/experimental/arm64/ ?

Code:
[ ]   stage3-arm64-20200508.tar.bz2   2020-05-09 08:05    293M   
[ ]   stage3-arm64-20200508.tar.bz2.CONTENTS   2020-05-09 08:05    6.7M   
[ ]   stage3-arm64-20200508.tar.bz2.DIGESTS   2020-05-09 08:05    796    


The arm64 stages are still made by hand.
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NeddySeagoon

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