Gentoo on bananapi

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2014 9:32 am Post subject: Gentoo on bananapi

Hello,

I just own a BananaPI card and I would like it to run Gentoo.

My goal is to replace my energy hog basement server, so the bPI will be use :
* headless
* has to support basic network facilities (DNS, DHCP, mediatomb, deluge, http, php, postgresql, ... servers) I know the CPU power is enough as before the head of my network was a Sun Sparc 5 box

* eventually, some I2C hacking

I didn't find any howto for this specific board but, as it is supposed to be compatible with both Raspberry PI and CubyBoard, I'll try to proceed with Cuby installation as the hardware is closer, and I'm currently building v7 (armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi) and will probably have to mix rPI instruction, this topic and this page.

Anyone working with Gentoo on this board ? If not, any tips (Am I going the right way ?).

Thanks

Laurent

Jogie214 · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 10:04 am Post subject:

Hi,

I just installed gentoo, but one advice at first use an SSD or a SATA HD, compilation is extremly limited by SD-Card performance, it took me nearly a day to compile dhcpcd, but the CPU wasn't the bootleneck.
First install crossdev, then create the armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi toolchain.
Download the armv7a stage 3.
To get a working kernel, uboot and script bin, I used the this wiki entry http://wiki.lemaker.org/Building_u-boot,_script.bin_and_linux-kernel.
The wiki is very ubuntu specific, you have to change the CROSS_COMPILE option in the Makefile in bananapi-bsp

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3477

Since SD card is solid-state persistent memory, i'm pretty sure it's lifetime is lmited by compilation as much as compilation's speed is limited by that card. Good you noticed it's a bad idea.
Yet another solution is swap over ethernet or mounting ramdisk created on a big PC over NFS. LAN might provide more throughput than many USB HDDs would.

Jogie214 · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 6:37 pm Post subject:

Hi,

for the compilation process I use tmpfs on RAM (650MB of the GB installed), to prevent to many write operations, the problem is the access to the headers and libraries in the system (at least I guess so). During a compilation process the CPU is (according to top) never at 100%, and since this is dual core board, there is still a lot of spare cpu power just idling around

. But maybe the problem is the limited cache of the processor, I don't know, as soon as my SSD is up and running, I'll install some tools and benchmark to identify the problem.
The installation on an NFS is indeed a good idea, but I don't want to use a big rig to provide the data for my power saving little board.

Greetings,
jogie
_________________
Desktop: Ryzen7 1700x / x370 / Radeon RX 550 / Gentoo amd64

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 8:19 pm Post subject:

Hi,

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 10:53 pm Post subject:

I'm trying this procedure too :

roarinelk · Guru Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 520

Jogie214 · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:48 pm Post subject:

Hi,

image.h is provided by lensfun, I just deinstalled it during the process. I'm sorry that I forgot to mention it.

destroyedlolo · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:24 pm Post subject:

ok, thanks, it helped to move ahead.
But do you have any idea to solve this nasty "error: git-remote-https died of signal 13" ?

Jogie214 · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:36 pm Post subject:

To be honest I don't know. But to my understanding it's a communications error during the final goodbye, so I don't care that much.
I'm trying to get Xorg and all HW features of the Bananapi up and running.
_________________
Desktop: Ryzen7 1700x / x370 / Radeon RX 550 / Gentoo amd64

destroyedlolo · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:21 pm Post subject:

It's what I have understood from my Internet reading but

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3477

Kernel and userland are not bound to each other. You need boh of them to boot, but none of them forces any particular variant of the other.
They must both be compiled for hardware you're going to run it on. That's pretty much it. If you can run raspbian on banana pi, both those components are good enough.
If you replace kernel with gentoo one, it will also be fine as long as it's compiled for this hardware.

destroyedlolo · Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 10:11 am Post subject:

Well, after some time spent to make my card reader working, back on this installation

So I give up with uboot and such compilation, I'll start from raspbian card.

This card has only 2 partitions :

TZ6wl · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2014 Posts: 2

@destroyedlolo: The space before the first partition is for the bootloader (uboot). On the Banana Pi uboot is installed past the MBR (so as to not over-write the partition table) and before the first partition.

destroyedlolo · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2014 10:38 pm Post subject:

TZ6wl · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2014 Posts: 2

@destroyedlolo: An MBR is typically 512 bytes. Usually SD Cards, USB Keys and other removable media shipped as VFAT format as the first partition offset by more than 512 bytes. I don't know the precise reason for this, but I'd guess it's so that the manufacturer a few extra KB of buffer room beyond the MBR.

To build an SD Card for the banana pi you will need the uboot.bin file and script.bin (a binary file containing configuration parameters). uImage and modules are specific to the kernel you are running. For example my link provides 3.4.90 uImage and modules for the Banana pi.

Here is the partition layout on my banana pi:

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 8:28 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your reply TZ6wl,

I'm almost done with the OS installation, as per http://www.cubieforums.com/index.php?topic=788.0.

Cross compilation is already in place and I'm on way to install a "Binary Host Server" to avoid compilation on the bPI.

I'll not install LibreOffice or any end-user stuff as my bPI will replace my basement servers and will run Apache + PHP + PostgreSQL + basic network stuff (dhcpd, ntpd, ...) and some home made monitoring tools.

Next step ... test : boot

destroyedlolo · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 12:57 am Post subject:

So it's working VERY WELL

And from the 1st shoot w/o issue.

Yeah, I'm now login on the beast using SSH and will work on the system configuration.

To be short, the todo list in order to have a bootable system is :

create a local overlay
Code:

crossdev --ov-output /usr/local/portage -S -v -t armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi
to build the tool chain
install needed tools
Code:

emerge dev-vcs/git dev-embedded/u-boot-tools sys-fs/dosfstools
create a working area and get the BSP :
Code:

mkdir bPI
cd bPI
git clone https://github.com/LeMaker/bananapi-bsp.git
cd bananapi-bsp/
./configure Bananapi
change the compiler to the good one, in ./Makefile
Quote:

CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi-
Code:

make
and wait for a lllooonnggg time (download + lot compilations to do)
everything has been built in build/Bananapi_hwpack/

Code:

./build/Bananapi_hwpack/
make a bootable card

Code:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=1
dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=1024 seek=8

create partitions

Code:

fdisk /dev/sdb

---
Commande (m pour l'aide) : n

Type de partition :
p primaire (0 primaire(s), 0 étendue(s), 4 libre(s))
e étendue
Sélection (p par défaut): p
Numéro de partition (1-4, default 1): 1
Premier secteur (2048-15523839, default 2048):
Dernier secteur, +secteurs ou +taille{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-15523839, default 15523839): +64M

Une nouvelle partition 1 de type « Linux » et de taille 64 MiB a été créée.

Commande (m pour l'aide) : t
Partition 1 sélectionnée
Code Hexa (taper L pour afficher tous les codes) :c
Si vous avez créé ou modifié une partition DOS 6.x, veuillez consulter la documentation de fdisk pour de plus amples renseignements.
Type de partition « Linux » modifié en « W95 FAT32 (LBA) ».

Commande (m pour l'aide) : a
Partition 1 sélectionnée
The bootable flag on partition 1 is enabled now.

Commande (m pour l'aide) : n

Type de partition :
p primaire (1 primaire(s), 0 étendue(s), 3 libre(s))
e étendue
Sélection (p par défaut): p
Numéro de partition (2-4, default 2):
Premier secteur (133120-15523839, default 133120):
Dernier secteur, +secteurs ou +taille{K,M,G,T,P} (133120-15523839, default 15523839):

Une nouvelle partition 2 de type « Linux » et de taille 7,3 GiB a été créée.

Commande (m pour l'aide) : w
La table de partitions a été altérée.
Appel d'ioctl() pour relire la table de partitions.
Synchronisation des disques.
---
mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb2

mount them

Code:

mkdir /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/gentoo
mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/gentoo/boot/

install Gentoo

Code:

wget http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/arm/autobuilds/current-stage3-armv7a_hardfp/stage3-armv7a_hardfp-20140819.tar.bz2
wget http://distfiles.gentoo.org/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
tar xfpjv stage3-armv7a_hardfp-20140819.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/
tar xjfv portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr

install boot stuffs

Code:

cd Bananapi_hwpack
cp kernel/* /mnt/gentoo/boot/
cp -r rootfs/lib/* /mnt/gentoo/lib
remove root password from /mnt/gentoo/etc/shadow

modify /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab

Code:

/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot auto noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext3 noatime 0 1
#/dev/SWAP none swap sw 0 0

umount everything
boot the bPI and ... voila

destroyedlolo · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:57 pm Post subject:

Well some feedback after a day of hacking ...

For the moment, I don't have an hard drive (waiting for the postman

), I've put /var/tmp/portage in RAM as well as /tmp to avoid to stress the SD.

I did some installation, and the result is pretty good : it's clear it's not an I5, but the performance (at least during locale emerge phases) looks better than my old Athlon 1 Ghz.

So all in all, I'm happy with this box.

robindv · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2014 Posts: 2

When running 'make' in the bananapi-bsp directory I get the following error during the linux-bananapi compilation:

MKDIR output/lib/firmware/emi26/
make[3]: *** No rule to make target `output/lib/firmware/./', needed by `output/lib/firmware/ti_3410.fw'. Stop.
make[3]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
MKDIR output/lib/firmware/emi62/
MKDIR output/lib/firmware/kaweth/
make[2]: *** [_modinst_post] Error 2
make[1]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/robin/banana/bananapi-bsp/linux-bananapi'
make: *** [linux] Error 2

Any idea how to fix this?

destroyedlolo · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:30 am Post subject:

Hi,

Did you followed the procedure above ? If so, I didn't face this issue, so it's probably upstream did an update which is not working. So I suggest to retry in few days or check with them :wink:

By the way, there is now a Gentoo image in LeMaker's website (but I have to admit I prefer building my own system :wink:

), and will probably put my bootstrap binaries in few days.

robindv · n00b Joined: 09 Sep 2014 Posts: 2

I followed the exact same procedure as you described. Downloading an image isn't as much fun as building your own system

When following the manual procedures here it just works: http://wiki.lemaker.org/Building_u-boot,_script.bin_and_linux-kernel#Building_the_kernel

I've submitted a bug report

destroyedlolo · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:52 am Post subject:

Ok, please keep us updated

destroyedlolo · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:55 am Post subject:

Hello,

if someone is interested with BananaPI, I found this interesting link about performances improvement :
http://linux-sunxi.org/Optimizing_system_performance

I didn't played with that for the moment, as I own only one card and it is used as head of my home network + website serving.

Bye

Laurent

bkifft · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2014 Posts: 1

Thanks for all the tips fellas, got my banana up and running without a hitch

Let me contribute in return: boot parameters to disable/lower GPU memory when running as a headless server.

The kernel is built with (paraphrased): "If config file, config file entries supersede hard coded parameters".
Thus when creating the config file (/boot/uEnv.txt) remember to add the required parameters, too.

E.g. minimal GPU mem (resulting in 986 MB available memory):