[Arm-dev] Centos aarch64 on Raspberry PI 3

[Paul R. Ganci]

On 01/09/2017 06:07 AM, Jim Perrin wrote:
> On 01/07/2017 01:51 PM, Paul R. Ganci wrote:
>> I received a Raspberry PI 3 for Christmas with which I am playing. I
>> would like to install the aarch64 CentOS 1611. However I am finding very
>> limited information on the web as how to go about doing that. Can
>> somebody get me started on what I need to do in order to install CentOS
>> 1611? Some initial questions.
>>
>> 1.) Can the aarch64 distribution even be installed on a Raspberry PI 3?
> Not, but we're working on it. There's a patchset that needs to be
> backported from a more recent kernel to the 4.5 kernel used in the
> aarch64 release. Additionally, there are a couple bugs in the kernel to
> be fixed regarding memory handling. The RPI3 is limited enough in ram
> that these bugs would have serious implications when running the 64bit
> version. In short, I hope to have something we can use in the coming
> weeks, but it's not currently in a functional state.
>
> One final note: There's a bug in the upstreamed graphics driver that has
> significant problems. Because of that, the patchset we're working on
> disables it. The distro would be limited to framebuffer console on the
> rpi3 only in 64bit mode.

Thank you Jim. I was wondering about some of what I was seeing both on 
the running armv7hl version and trying to install the aarch64 version. I 
guess I will have to be patient.. I can probably find the time on a 
weekend to try something out if it helps.

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:

 > 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

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.

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

-- 
Paul (ganci at nurdog.com)
Cell: (303)257-5208
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