Arm-dev November 2020

arm-dev@lists.centos.org

3 participants
6 discussions

AArch64 Pi4 and CentOS 8
by Brent Kolasinski 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

Hi everyone, I've been looking into things I can do to help with getting CentOS 8 AArch64 to run on the Pi4. It appears that the upstream kernel now has the proper stuff merged in to support the NIC and eMMC controller. So far 2 approaches are being made: The U-Boot mechanism (looks like this is what Ubuntu 20.04 is doing) and the SBBR (ACPI + UEFI) way. It looks like a few folks may be loading the SBBR firmware with luck on the standard CentOS 8 aarch64 image. Could one potentially recompile the SRPM for kernel 5.6 from elrepo and drop it in? I found the CentOS8 pi4 aarch64 userland image here: https://people.centos.org/pgreco. Has anyone tried getting the SBBR firmware to load the stock aarch64 CentOS 8 image without support for the eMMC / NIC, to basically bootstrap and compile the SRPM for the 5.6 kernel? And finally does anyone know if CentOS will be backporting the Pi4 changes to 4.18, or will they be releasing a custom kernel? Could I help out with that?

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rng-tools missing and /dev/hwrng without driver
by SW＠EU 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

Hi, today I will report a problem that is released to ipa-server. This server contains a certificate authority and such service need many entropy. The default on CentOS 7 on a Banana PI is not enough, i.e. $(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail) is less than 1000. I have solved this in meantime by installing and enabling of haveged from the EPEL repository. Normally it would be done by installing the rng-tools. But there are two problems: 1. The rng-tools was not in the repositories, so I have downloaded rng-tools-5-8.fc24.armv7hl.rpm because this are the same version which is included in CentOS 7.3 for x86_64. 2. This rng-tools are usable but the daemon starts and stops immediately with the following error message: # rngd -v /dev/hwrng: No such device /dev/tpm0: No such file or directory No entropy sources found, exiting This is not the problem of this binary it is a problem of the Kernel. /dev/hwrng exists and if I remove it then it reappears after reboot, but # ls -l /dev/hwrng crw-------. 1 root root 10, 183 1. Jan 1970 /dev/hwrng # udevadm info -a -n /dev/hwrng Udevadm info starts with the device specified by the devpath and then walks up the chain of parent devices. It prints for every device found, all possible attributes in the udev rules key format. A rule to match, can be composed by the attributes of the device and the attributes from one single parent device. looking at device '/devices/virtual/misc/hw_random': KERNEL=="hw_random" SUBSYSTEM=="misc" DRIVER=="" ATTR{rng_current}=="none" ATTR{rng_available}=="" there is no driver for this device. I have searched and found this link http://forum.lemaker.org/thread-23618-1-1.html which includes a link to the full story. If I read all right then on bananian /dev/hwrng appears only if the adapted or a more actual sun4i-ss.ko module is loaded (there is written: "module author has indicated this will be going into the mainline kernel shortly“). This module is also loaded on a Banana PI with current CentOS 7. So does the kernel of CentOS 7.3 for ARM32 include this patch and if yes why it does not work or otherwise why this device appears but has no driver? TIA, Silvio Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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EPEL repo not available?
by Boyd Ako 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

Can anybody verify that the EPEL repo for ARMHFP isn’t available? I keep getting an error saying the REPOMD file isn’t there when running yum. It works if I use —disablerepo=epel\* when using yum. But, there might be some stuff in the EPEL that I’m looking for. Running it on a Raspberry Pi 3 and trying to get Nagios installed for home use. Domo, Boyd H. Ako boyd.hanalei.ako(a)gmail.com (424) 244-9653 https://www.boydhanaleiako.me “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” -Henry Ford PGP/GPG Public Key: https://sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xC58073B21618F134

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Gigabyte MP30-AR0
by Gordan Bobic 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

Hi, I am toying with the idea of getting a Gigabyte MP30-AR0 board (despite the insanely exorbitant price tag). Has anyone got the aarch64 CentOS working on one of those? Any special instructions? Also, if I get the ISO, is it bootable on aarch64? Does the installer work? Or does the image have to be used like on 32-bit ARM? Thanks. Gordan

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Future of CentOS 8 on armhfp?
by Paul Graham 25 Nov '20

25 Nov '20

I have been using the CentOS 8 image on a few 32-bit ARM devices (Zynq 7000 and Raspberry Pi 4) for several months with a lot of success. For my use case, I have to create some custom kernels and bootloaders to support my custom hardware for Zynq, but I leverage the CentOS 8 userland. In any case, I was wondering what the plans were for CentOS 8 on armhfp and what kind of help you might need to help get CentOS 8 for armhfp as well supported as it is for CentOS 7? I also use CentOS 7 for some projects, but I would like to transition to CentOS 8 to leverage the longer potential support cycle and the newer packages and technologies. Lastly, what is the best way to report CentOS 8 on armhfp bugs? Is it better to report that here or at https://bugs.centos.org ? Thanks for all of your hard work on CentOS for armhfp! Paul

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Marvell MVPP2 NIC support
by Marcin Wojtas 03 Nov '20

03 Nov '20

Hi, After installing Centos8.2 on Marvell CN9132 based platform I noticed that compared to altarch7-aarch64 support the Marvell MVPP2 NIC support was dropped. In order to enable it we would need to add CONFIG_ARCH_MVEBU=y CONFIG_MVPP2=m to the SOURCES/kernel-aarch64.config & SOURCES/kernel-aarch64-debug.config What are the steps to achieve that? Centos altarch7 had a described procedure for submitting the kernel patches, but that seems to be changed in the new distro version. Best regards, Marcin

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Arm-dev November 2020