Now that SolidRun is ramping up our Armada 8040 line I have had more initiative to start testing various distros. There is an active effort to bring full UEFI support to the 8040 platforms however this is still a WIP. In the meantime I was looking into u-boot's efi loader and currently there is major hurdle with using this boot method on the CentOS images...the /boot partition is formatted as xfs.
Of course it would be easy enough to spin a new image with /boot formatted as ext4. Is there any reason not to make the default images use this configuration? This would obviously be one less hurdle for using CentOS aarch64 on more platforms.
Thanks, Jon
On 07/30/2017 11:01 PM, Jon Nettleton wrote:
Now that SolidRun is ramping up our Armada 8040 line I have had more initiative to start testing various distros. There is an active effort to bring full UEFI support to the 8040 platforms however this is still a WIP. In the meantime I was looking into u-boot's efi loader and currently there is major hurdle with using this boot method on the CentOS images...the /boot partition is formatted as xfs.
I'm kind of excited about this board, so I'm interested in helping to move this forward.
Of course it would be easy enough to spin a new image with /boot formatted as ext4. Is there any reason not to make the default images use this configuration? This would obviously be one less hurdle for using CentOS aarch64 on more platforms.
While I don't have much love for uboot support here, there isn't a real reason for using xfs for /boot here beyond "it's the installer default". When I bake the next image, I'll see about changing /boot to ext4.
On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 4:45 PM, Jim Perrin jperrin@centos.org wrote:
On 07/30/2017 11:01 PM, Jon Nettleton wrote:
Now that SolidRun is ramping up our Armada 8040 line I have had more initiative to start testing various distros. There is an active effort to bring full UEFI support to the 8040 platforms however this is still a WIP. In the meantime I was looking into u-boot's efi loader and currently there is major hurdle with using this boot method on the CentOS images...the /boot partition is formatted as xfs.
I'm kind of excited about this board, so I'm interested in helping to move this forward.
Great! looking forward to working with you. The MacchiatoBin board is a great community board however I think The ClearFog line we release with the 8040 will really be exciting. https://www.solid-run.com/2017/06/28/solidrun-unveils-first-arm-based-com-ex...
Of course it would be easy enough to spin a new image with /boot formatted as ext4. Is there any reason not to make the default images use this configuration? This would obviously be one less hurdle for using CentOS aarch64 on more platforms.
While I don't have much love for uboot support here, there isn't a real reason for using xfs for /boot here beyond "it's the installer default". When I bake the next image, I'll see about changing /boot to ext4.
I understand the push to move AARCH64 to support SBSA, however there are still lots of ARMv8 boards that will only every support u-boot. And conversely there are only a few distros that are fully supporting EFI booting on ARM. Especially for our developer boards having the flexibility to use either is a huge win.
Thanks for looking into changing this. I will be looking forward to testing the next image.
-Jon
On 07/31/2017 09:41 AM, Jon Nettleton wrote: <snip>
I understand the push to move AARCH64 to support SBSA, however there are still lots of ARMv8 boards that will only every support u-boot. And conversely there are only a few distros that are fully supporting EFI booting on ARM. Especially for our developer boards having the flexibility to use either is a huge win.
Yup. I'm not as strict on SBSA/SBBR as others, but it's certainly my first option and something I push for. That said, I've seen patches for uboot floating around that emulates the needed EFI bits for booting, so hopefully that feature set will land soon. If we can build for efi, but use uboot, that makes things a bit simpler. I'm not a fan of the many one-off implementations of uboot for various things.
Thanks for looking into changing this. I will be looking forward to testing the next image.
Sure thing, I'll let you know when it's posted.
Am 31.07.2017 um 18:41 schrieb Jon Nettleton:
[...] Thanks for looking into changing this. I will be looking forward to testing the next image.
-Jon
Hi Jon,
I've tried to automate the process bringing CentOS to (otherwise) unsupported ARM/ARM64 boards. Jim was so kind to provide a 'generic' ARM64 userland which makes the whole process quite easy. So if you have your firmware/kernel already in place you may try to set up CentOS via z2d [1] while waiting for the next image.
Cheers Uli
On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 10:31 PM, Uli Middelberg uli@middelberg.de wrote:
Am 31.07.2017 um 18:41 schrieb Jon Nettleton:
[...] Thanks for looking into changing this. I will be looking forward to testing the next image.
-Jon
Hi Jon,
I've tried to automate the process bringing CentOS to (otherwise) unsupported ARM/ARM64 boards. Jim was so kind to provide a 'generic' ARM64 userland which makes the whole process quite easy. So if you have your firmware/kernel already in place you may try to set up CentOS via z2d [1] while waiting for the next image.
Uli,
I haven't seen your work before. Looks interesting, I will take a look.
Thanks
-
Jim Perrin -
Jon Nettleton -
Uli Middelberg