Has anyone been able to install centos using iso on a Hikey 960? The wiki says "The Hikey from 96boards mostly works, but setup is complex. The installer currently cannot be used as one would traditionally expect."
Any guides out there on how to get it to work? I am only able to get it to the initial installation menu but no further, I tried playing with various kernel parameters but to no avail.
Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!
On 10/25/2018 04:50 PM, Skorpeo Skorpeo wrote:
Has anyone been able to install centos using iso on a Hikey 960? The wiki says "The Hikey from 96boards mostly works, but setup is complex. The installer currently cannot be used as one would traditionally expect."
Any guides out there on how to get it to work? I am only able to get it to the initial installation menu but no further, I tried playing with various kernel parameters but to no avail.
Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!
I have no idea .. if someone wants to donate a board, I'll try to figure it out and put the info on the wiki.
There could be several sticking points .. are all the drivers in the mainline kernel.
The main issue here is those machines are armv8 (aarch64) but they do not have uefi support .. that means that the standard CentOS-7 aarch64 installer will not work.
What you would instead need to do is BASICALLY either use armhfp (32bit) install .. OR create a 64bit image similar to or armhfp 32 bit images and then use a 64bit uboot.
I have no idea if our uboot has 64 bit compiled software for that board .. and we would need to create a 64bit image (which we need to try to do anyway).
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
On 10/25/2018 05:30 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 10/25/2018 04:50 PM, Skorpeo Skorpeo wrote:
Has anyone been able to install centos using iso on a Hikey 960? The wiki says "The Hikey from 96boards mostly works, but setup is complex. The installer currently cannot be used as one would traditionally expect."
Any guides out there on how to get it to work? I am only able to get it to the initial installation menu but no further, I tried playing with various kernel parameters but to no avail.
Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!
I have no idea .. if someone wants to donate a board, I'll try to figure it out and put the info on the wiki.
There could be several sticking points .. are all the drivers in the mainline kernel.
The main issue here is those machines are armv8 (aarch64) but they do not have uefi support .. that means that the standard CentOS-7 aarch64 installer will not work.
What you would instead need to do is BASICALLY either use armhfp (32bit) install .. OR create a 64bit image similar to or armhfp 32 bit images and then use a 64bit uboot.
I have no idea if our uboot has 64 bit compiled software for that board .. and we would need to create a 64bit image (which we need to try to do anyway).
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
I meant to say NOT on hobby boards with no UEFI for aarch64 ... :)
On 10/25/18 6:30 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
In the for-what-it-is-worth column,,,,
I am beginning to see that at least the odroid HC1 is targeted beyond the hobby board.
And Itron has a board that they market to partners for smartgrid applications.
https://www.itron.com/na/partners/developer/products/boards
But I dropped working with my colleagues at Itron over a year ago.
On 10/25/2018 05:57 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 10/25/18 6:30 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
In the for-what-it-is-worth column,,,,
I am beginning to see that at least the odroid HC1 is targeted beyond the hobby board.
And Itron has a board that they market to partners for smartgrid applications.
https://www.itron.com/na/partners/developer/products/boards
But I dropped working with my colleagues at Itron over a year ago.
Let me be more clear .. I am not using the word hobby to mean anything negative. I could have also used embedded or non server or any number of terms.
Those boards have lots of uses (in cars for driving their video screens and bluetooth interfaces, embedded in several industrial systems, use on ships and planes to do things on the electronics systems, etc. They can be very important.
But that is just not really the focus of what aarch64 from CentOS is .. it is for big iron servers with many gigs if RAM and many cores and UEFI, etc.
The uboot type boards are almost all one off designs with individually unique components .. many of which are not supported in the mainline kernel. Many of the companies don't seem to understand Linux or the kernel ecosystem, etc. That is a generalization, of course .. but if a company really wanted enterprise deployment, they would likely be using UEFI.
If they aren't, then they are not really interested in CentOS or RHEL being installed on their hardware. 1, 2, 3 GB ram is really not going to cut it for many CentOS 64 bit installs. I mean, in a stripped down CLI environment you can do some things .. but if you want to use CentOS GUI installs, that amount of RAM is going to struggle. If you want to do video processing, etc .. well, not really on CentOS with 3 GB ram (right?).
Now, you might be able to use VNC (or some compressed variantof that) to connect to a large server and get some graphical things done .. and fairly minimal loaded CLI tasks would be fine.
Anyway .. we are certainly interested in getting all things arm working .. especially on this list. I just thought I'd be honest with you guys about what the real 'designed purpose' of the 64bit tree.
On 10/25/18 7:27 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 10/25/2018 05:57 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 10/25/18 6:30 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
In the for-what-it-is-worth column,,,,
I am beginning to see that at least the odroid HC1 is targeted beyond the hobby board.
And Itron has a board that they market to partners for smartgrid applications.
https://www.itron.com/na/partners/developer/products/boards
But I dropped working with my colleagues at Itron over a year ago.
Let me be more clear .. I am not using the word hobby to mean anything negative. I could have also used embedded or non server or any number of terms.
Those boards have lots of uses (in cars for driving their video screens and bluetooth interfaces, embedded in several industrial systems, use on ships and planes to do things on the electronics systems, etc. They can be very important.
But that is just not really the focus of what aarch64 from CentOS is .. it is for big iron servers with many gigs if RAM and many cores and UEFI, etc.
Johnny,
I have been a long time Centos user. Like since its predecessor (whitehat? whitebox? So long ago) folded.
When I was RIFed from Verizon the end of '14, I took a serious look at what I could assemble, sell, support, and live off from. But I really could not monetize (term I had to live with while with Verizon) nor effectively build a box to support. So I got some consulting contracts to keep me solvent and plugged along.
Now I am approaching 'retirement age' (70 in 2 years), I am seeing the potential here to build, sell, and support something that will supplement my Soc income. I allocate 1/4 my time to it and am looking forward to having something I can live from.
I am really appreciative of all the work you and others do to build the pieces that I hope to make into something marketable. With a sticker: "Centos inside"!
Or maybe it will just be a retirement 'hobby'. Time will tell.
On Oct 25, 2018, at 19:27, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
Let me be more clear .. I am not using the word hobby to mean anything negative. I could have also used embedded or non server or any number of terms.
Those boards have lots of uses (in cars for driving their video screens and bluetooth interfaces, embedded in several industrial systems, use on ships and planes to do things on the electronics systems, etc. They can be very important.
But that is just not really the focus of what aarch64 from CentOS is .. it is for big iron servers with many gigs if RAM and many cores and UEFI, etc.
Thank you for the clarification — that’s very helpful! Given that the ‘e’ in CentOS stands for ‘enterprise’, it’s also a very reasonable stance.
With regard the the terminology, I agree that ‘embedded’ would be a good term to use for boards like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, etc. Those boards have a definite legitimate niche in professional computing, but one that is quite different from the classic ‘enterprise’ role.
Although — ‘embedded’ does start with an ‘e’ as well. Hmm… :)
Cheers!
|----------------------------------------------------------------------| | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | | | Paravel Systems | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. | | -- Leonard Brandwein | |----------------------------------------------------------------------|
Ok makes sense, just thought maybe someone has some secret sauce... Just for the sake of posterity here is what I was able to achieve so far:
I am able to get to the install screen using the iso after after installing UEFI on the board but then it blanks out
I am also able to make it work using .dtb following the debian instructions here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/96Boards/HiKey960 (using the reference kernel in the bottom in order to make stuff work - so I guess not mainline...) and then transplanting centos aarch64 rootfs to that, i.e. only userspace tools (I think that's the term used?).
Finally, I can't donate a board :( but being creative, I may be able to set up remote access to mine if that would be helpful. I could have you ssh into a system that is connected to its serial console (via usb).
Cheers
On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:30 PM Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
On 10/25/2018 04:50 PM, Skorpeo Skorpeo wrote:
Has anyone been able to install centos using iso on a Hikey 960? The wiki says "The Hikey from 96boards mostly works, but setup is complex. The installer currently cannot be used as one would traditionally
expect."
Any guides out there on how to get it to work? I am only able to get it to the initial installation menu but no further, I tried playing with various kernel parameters but to no avail.
Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!
I have no idea .. if someone wants to donate a board, I'll try to figure it out and put the info on the wiki.
There could be several sticking points .. are all the drivers in the mainline kernel.
The main issue here is those machines are armv8 (aarch64) but they do not have uefi support .. that means that the standard CentOS-7 aarch64 installer will not work.
What you would instead need to do is BASICALLY either use armhfp (32bit) install .. OR create a 64bit image similar to or armhfp 32 bit images and then use a 64bit uboot.
I have no idea if our uboot has 64 bit compiled software for that board .. and we would need to create a 64bit image (which we need to try to do anyway).
One thing to keep in mind is our armhfp distro is designed for the hobby type boards .. BUT our aarch64 distro is designed to run on large 64bit UEFI arm servers, but hobby boards that don't follow the UEFI standard and have limited RAM (that board as 3GB), etc.
Arm-dev mailing list Arm-dev@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/arm-dev
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Fred Gleason -
Johnny Hughes -
Robert Moskowitz -
Skorpeo Skorpeo