From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Vagrant Cascadian Subject: Re: Guix on the ASUS C201PA Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2019 00:59:22 -0800 Message-ID: <87lg1s4bv9.fsf@ponder> References: <875zswjwoc.fsf@ngyro.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:57459) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h1SPM-0005Cg-Hs for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 06 Mar 2019 04:00:18 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h1SPH-0002Q9-JO for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 06 Mar 2019 04:00:09 -0500 Received: from cascadia.aikidev.net ([173.255.214.101]:60046) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1h1SP5-0001rz-7m for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 06 Mar 2019 04:00:03 -0500 In-Reply-To: <875zswjwoc.fsf@ngyro.com> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Timothy Sample , guix-devel@gnu.org --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2019-03-06, Timothy Sample wrote: > I was able to get Guix to boot on an ASUS Chromebook C201PA. This model > of computer is pretty neat. It=E2=80=99s an ARMv7 (32-bit) machine that = can be > run with entirely free software. There is even a free graphics driver > in the works [1]. Very excited to try this! I've been working on getting Debian to work on it for years, and had it working with linux 4.8.x... and then haven't gotten it working with any kernel version since. I've very recently been trying to get Archlinux and Parabola working on it, but haven't gotten very far yet... > For the bootloader, these machines use Depthcharge. Depthcharge boots a > specially packaged and signed kernel image from a specially marked > partition. This kernel image is written to the partition directly > without a file system. I have two big technical frustrations with Depthcharge: It's really hard to debug or select alternate kernels when boot is failing. The kernel+initrd is limited to ~16MB. linux-libre on armhf is about 5MB, and the initrd around 11MB... so it's running pretty close to that limit (Debian initrd's are even larger these days). I even increased the size of the partition to 32MB to see if it would work, but it refused to boot from anything larger than 16MB. > There may be a way to improve this by bringing U-Boot into the booting > process. The next version of U-Boot (to be released in April) will > support this machine directly. My recent renewed interest is actually to test the chromebook_speedy u-boot target included upstream... but the LCD doesn't work with my particular C201PA, and there's no simple to access serial console, so apparently not all variants are supported yet; am working with the person who added support to u-boot to get that fixed, though. > Alternatively, if using U-Boot directly causes problems, it=E2=80=99s pos= sible > that Depthcharge could boot into U-Boot. That would be interesting to get working, though I'm not sure that's supported in the current chromebook_speedy target in u-boot. Would be easier to test (u-boot should fit in 16MB just fine for the forseeable future!). Thanks for working on it, and I'll try it out and report back. live well, vagrant --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEARYKAB0WIQRlgHNhO/zFx+LkXUXcUY/If5cWqgUCXH+L6wAKCRDcUY/If5cW qk+0APwLI8aFQOFqMNtSfah9I8/y8nQnH/tvfD2yqRmuXVmkXAD/SFL8nFK7zQ5J eMRlFzJ1ubkJywMoikvzBlr4nbgPEw4= =/t85 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--