On 7/12/20 17:21, Jascha Gerold wrote:

On December 7, 2020 at 9:28 AM, Pablo Sebastián Greco pablo@fliagreco.com.ar wrote:

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On 6/12/20 18:39, Jascha Gerold via Arm-dev wrote:

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Hi everyone! I just joined the list. Total arm/rpi4 beginner here. Been using Fedora for a year on my personal computer (switched from Apple). Thats my background. My goal is to have my rpi4 run a webserver for my Django projects. I have been experimenting with Raspberry Pi OS, Fedora 33 and Centos 7/8 on the Raspberry. I would like to use a yum/dnf based distribution on the Pi, because I am a bit more familiar with its cli. I believe that the CentOS-Userland-7-armv7hl-RaspberryPI-Minimal-4-2009-sda.raw image would be the way to go. But frankly I am terrified by configuring all the different sources for the latest packages (sqlite3, django 3, and so on) and getting them to interact flawlessly without breaking the system. Fedora does not have a native rpi4 image. They are generic and boot differently that the CentOS one.

Can I use the boot partition from CentOS-Userland-7-armv7hl-RaspberryPI-Minimal-4-2009-sda.raw combined with the Fedora Userland? Id have to disable kernel updates I guess and cross compile them myself (done that successfully yesterday).

TLDR: My question is: How do I get the native rpi4 centos way to boot combined with fedora userland?

Jay

Hello Jay, welcome! Let me see if I can address your questions together. and a bit out of order. If your idea is to use Fedora userland, then I'd use fedora altogether, they don't have rpi4 specific builds, but they don't need it either. Fedora uses always the latest mainline kernel, and it has "good enough" support for what you're trying to do (basically headless). If you were trying to do something with graphics, it would be a completely different story. If you decide to use CentOS, I'd not use the armv7hl image (32 bits) and go straight to aarch64. There's no official image yet, but I've posted one that is working really well https://people.centos.org/pgreco/CentOS-Userland-8-stream-aarch64-RaspberryP... https://people.centos.org/pgreco/CentOS-Userland-8-stream-aarch64-RaspberryPI-Minimal-4/

, and this is where I keep the updated kernels https://people.centos.org/pgreco/rpi_aarch64_el8/ https://people.centos.org/pgreco/rpi_aarch64_el8/ (along with other rpi-specific stuff)

HTH Pablo.\

Thank you for replying so promptly, Pablo! I actually tried to get Fedora to run from a USB attached  HDD, but my knowledge was not good enough. I can only get it to boot from sd card. Thats why I love the way CentOS boots with the rpi4 image: I just have to point root to sda3 instead of mmcblk0p3 in cmdline.txt (tried to use partuuid, which works for booting, but then the script rootfs-expand does not find its expected rootfs).

Wrt Fedora boot, if usb works after you boot from the SD card, then I guess I'd check 3 things, rpi-eeprom (needs to be rather new to support booting from usb), rpi-firwmare (rpi-specific files in /boot, also need to be rather new), and maybe, but less likely, driver missing in the initramfs. Wrt cmdline.txt and UUID, I have no idea why that doesn't work, I too change it to /dev/sda3)

So today I tried the centos image you mentioned (8, stream, aarch64). It works just fine, however the cpu frequency stays at max. With the centos 7, armhfp image the cpu is allowed to throttle down. Is that a kernel or config thing? I have only tried compiling armhfp kernels from the raspberry github. I can try to compile a 64bit one if they have the correct sources and configs. Anything more than that exceeds my current abilities. Can you point me in a direction (like where to look for the cpu frequency issue)?

I guess something tuned is doing, or something missing in the config.txt. The kernels are the ones from the rpi foundation's github, but just rebuilt for CentOS with a few different options.

Well thanks again for responding!! Jay

Pablo P.S: try to always do reply to all, so all the answers end up in the mailing list. Thanks