Arm-dev October 2023

arm-dev@lists.centos.org

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

18 208

Copying uboot from one SD to another
by Robert Moskowitz 19 Oct '25

19 Oct '25

How can I get the uboot off an SD card and then put it on another? dd is fine, but how much do I move? The whole 4MB infront of the first partition? Or is there some way to determine the actual uboot size and grab just that? thanks

3 2

RPM kernels for PI2
by stephan54190 12 Oct '25

12 Oct '25

Hello the CentOS team, I just found something surprising, on http://mirror.centos.org/altarch/7.9.2009/kernel/armhfp/kernel-rpi2/Package… There, one can see many raspberrypi2-kernel RPMs: - raspberrypi2-kernel-5.10.23-v7.1.el7.armv7hl.rpm (initial) - ... - raspberrypi2-kernel-5.4.179-v7.1.el7.armv7hl.rpm (most recent one). But one can also see raspberrypi2-kernel-5.10.23-v7.1.el7.armv7hl.rpm, when all other 5.10.xxx come in "experimental". Am I wrong, or this leads YUM UPDATE to update to 5.10.23 and being stuck there (if experimental repo is disabled) ? Regards, Stephan.

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Arm-dev October 2023