[Arm-dev] Gigabyte MP30-AR0

Tue Feb 23 12:11:34 UTC 2016
Gordan Bobic <gordan at redsleeve.org>

On 2016-02-23 12:07, Michael Howard wrote:
> On 23/02/2016 11:53, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> On 2016-02-23 11:47, Michael Howard wrote:
>>> On 22/02/2016 20:08, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>>>> On 2016-02-22 17:29, Michael Howard wrote:
>>>>> On 22/02/2016 17:04, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>>>>>> On 2016-02-22 16:57, Michael Howard wrote:
>>>>>>> On 22/02/2016 16:47, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Anyway, the install does in fact succeed, which is great. I 
>>>>>>>>> probably
>>>>>>>>> should have stuck with the LVM partitioning scheme but hey ho, 
>>>>>>>>> I can
>>>>>>>>> re run things now that I know UEFI is working.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> So, I have a minimal CentOS install with 4.2.0-0.21.el7.aarch64
>>>>>>>>> kernel. Great start, thanks to all.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> There is no networking so I need to get the installer to 
>>>>>>>>> recognise the
>>>>>>>>> nics at install time.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> So installer produces a bootable system, complete with a working 
>>>>>>>> kernel?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Yes, and no. It produces a bootable kernel.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Right, but how does that kernel get booted?
>>>>>> u-boot -> kernel ?
>>>>>> u-boot -> UEFI -> kernel ?
>>>>>> u-boot -> UEFI -> grub2 -> kernel ?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Does it use grub2 or does it do some magic to boot the kernel 
>>>>>>>> straight
>>>>>>>> from UEFI?
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I haven't had the nerve to attempt to bun UEFI to SPI-NOR 
>>>>>>> permanently,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Oh, I wasn't suggesting that. I cannot think of a good reason to 
>>>>>> burn
>>>>>> UEFI into SPI-NOR vs. chain-loading it from u-boot, since the boot
>>>>>> cascade is automatable.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> so following the install (and any subsequent ones) I've loaded it 
>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>> u-boot manually and then booted directly from UEFI from there. I 
>>>>>>> can
>>>>>>> of course automate that I suppose.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Right, so post-install the boot process is:
>>>>>> u-boot -> UEFI -> kernel ?
>>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes.
>>>> 
>>>> Sweet! Now I just have to try to scrape together enough to get
>>>> me one of those cometh pay day. :-D
>>>> 
>>>>>> No grub2 involved?
>>>>> No.
>>>> 
>>>> I'll see if I can do something about that when mine arrives. It
>>>> would be nice to have it working the same way x86 UEFI works.
>>>> 
>>> With my pre-occupation with having no networking, I gave you some bum
>>> info.
>> 
>> Oh... No NIC driver? Or something else missing?
>> 
> 
> No, not a driver issue. On my first install the installer just
> wouldn't accept that the nic(s) were indeed connected. After the
> install the  system recognised that eth0, eth1 & eth2 existed but they
> each had a hardware address of ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff and no ip address. To
> resolve that I needed to set the hardware addresses in UEFI and they
> then shone through. They were correctly set in u-boot.
> 
> The installer still wouldn't accept the nic(s) were connected even
> when set in UEFI. I could assign an ip using the installer shell on
> [F2] but by then the installer had given up on vnc.

No VGA framebuffer support gets detected by the installer?

> In the end, I
> edited the grub command line and appended ip, netmask, gateway and
> vnc, after which I got a gui install over vnc. Don't yet know if X11
> works on the installed system, I haven't tried.

I see, so is the installer running over serial console or VGA/USB 
console?

Gordan