On 01/07/2017 09:11 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

I thought the RPi3 is 32bit, not 64?

See https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32

For what is working with RPI 3

I already have the 32 bit version running on the RPI 3. However, the RPI 3 is 64 bits. Here is the specification

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/pispecs2.png&imgrefurl=http://hackaday.com/2016/02/28/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-3/&h=580&w=1116&tbnid=Jy9J_sr2BeagwM:&vet=1&tbnh=109&tbnw=211&docid=XePtcfF-lyDXzM&usg=__6zDhA6iUiypfs0pQZUzHxrOxd0w=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjam6qF2rHRAhXM4IMKHXj_D3IQ9QEIHjAA SOC BCM2837 CPU Quad Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz Instruction Set ARMv8-A GPU 400MHz VideoCore IV RAM 1GB SDRAM Storage micro-SD Ethernet 10/100 Wireless 802.11n/Bluetooth 4.0 Video Output HDMI/composite Audio Output JDMI/Headphone GPIO 40

The 1GB SDRAM does limit the usefulness but unless there is something else that makes it impossible to run a 64 bit OS it should in principle work.

I made an image on an SD Card per the readme but where I am spinning my wheels is the line that says this:

* You will need to add the appropriate boot information in a uefi entry after using this image, since the installer traditionally handles this.

I am not sure what I have to do to get the system to boot off the image I created. I tried some very obvious stuff such as grabbing a cmdline.txt and config.txt from the 32bit version. If I look at the 32bit version I see all this interesting stuff (e.g. bcm2708-rpi-b.dtb, etc.) but there is no such stuff in the 64 bit boot directory on the image. It seems lots of stuff might be missing? For example I suppose I need 64 bit RPI3 firmware which might be unavailable?

On 01/07/2017 09:54 PM, Paul R. Ganci wrote:

On 01/07/2017 09:11 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

...

I thought the RPi3 is 32bit, not 64?

See https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32

For what is working with RPI 3https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32/RaspberryPi3

On 01/09/2017 07:02 PM, Paul R. Ganci wrote:

I do have a question about how to use the distribution. I noticed that there are two directories containing things essential to the distro. Here is part of the directory tree which contains the images.

mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/isos/aarch64/CentOS-7-aarch64-Everything.iso /CentOS-7-aarch64-NetInstall.iso /CentOS-7-aarch64-rolling.img.xz

/CentOS-7-aarch64-rootfs-7.3.1611.tar.xz /CentOS-7-aarch64.img.xz /ReadMe.txt

mirror.centos.org/altarch/7/os/aarch64/images/boot.iso /efiboot.img /pxeboot/

In the ReadMe.txt file I found this documentation:

## Burning the image to disk

You may simply dd this image to disk, however for the sake of ensuring 
that it is written correctly, we recommend the following command. Please 
replace the image-name and target device with the appropriate values for
your environment. 

```
dd if=<image-name.img> of=/dev/sdX bs=2M conv=fsync && sync;
```

Which image should be burnt? I chose the CentOS-7-aarch64.img.xz and did the following from a CentOS 6.8 X86_64 system:

That is the proper image, however it's not meant for the rpi3, and not all ARMv8/ARM64 systems are created equal.

...

unxz CentOS-7-aarch64.img.xz dd if=CentOS-7-aarch64.img of=/dev/sdf bs=2M conv=fsync && sync; sgdisk -e -d4 -n4:0:0 /dev/sdf

These steps are meant for systems based on Applied Micro, AMD, or Cavium chipsets. They will not work for the rpi, because the rpi is built differently.

However, when I stuck the sdcard into the RPI3 it did not do a thing. I would have been giddy with joy even if it crashed on something while booting. However, absolutely nothing happened as if there was no boot record to be found.

The rpi3 wants uboot with a specific disk layout and device structure, while the images we build expect UEFI(similar to modern x86_64 systems). If you want the details (and are having trouble sleeping) I'd invite you to read up on all the gossip surrounding the SBBR and SBSA standards. The incredibly short version (not suitable for pedants) is that we expect UEFI, pxe support, and would be REALLY happy with acpi support. Without these, you often have to do custom hacks to partitioning, uboot, or devicetree files to get each board to boot.

It's this hackery that's required for the rpi3. Once we have kernel support enabled for it, we'll have to ship a custom 'rpi3-only' image which includes all of these modifications, in a pre-built image.

So my question is how do I make a bootable sdcard in this case? Did I chose the correct "img" file or do I have to work some magic somehow. For example do I have to use the efiboot.img to make an EFI boot directory? I would love to see the RPI3 crash trying to run the OS. :)

If only. The rpi3 doesn't support EFI. If we're *very* lucky, the newer uboot efi emulation will be enough, but we're not far enough along to test that yet.

If there are some simple instructions so that I might know what I am doing I would be grateful. Again Thanks.

Once I have something worth kicking around, I will absolutely build this documentation out.

On 01/10/2017 07:30 PM, Paul R. Ganci wrote:

On 01/10/2017 07:07 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:

...

<snipping lots of good stuff> If only. The rpi3 doesn't support EFI. If we're *very* lucky, the newer uboot efi emulation will be enough, but we're not far enough along to test that yet.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Jim. I will leave you alone now! :)

No worries at all. I want people interested in ARM, so I really don't mind taking the time to explain our status with it, or how people can help.

On 01/14/2017 12:52 PM, Richard Henwood wrote:

I've had success with kraxel's AArch64 Fedora builds for RPi3. It looks like kraxel also has a CentOS AArch64 image for RPi3: https://www.kraxel.org/repos/rpi2/images/

Thanks I will check it out.