From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Vagrant Cascadian Subject: Re: ARMHF flash image - Put on website under GuixSD Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2018 08:45:29 -0700 Message-ID: <87y3c92w6e.fsf@aikidev.net> References: <20180907222110.50e6bac2@scratchpost.org> <877ejth6yj.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45376) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fzONm-0001Ky-4C for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Sep 2018 11:45:47 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fzONi-00007o-M2 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 10 Sep 2018 11:45:44 -0400 In-Reply-To: <877ejth6yj.fsf@gnu.org> 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: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= , Danny Milosavljevic Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2018-09-10, Ludovic Court=C3=A8s wrote: > Danny Milosavljevic skribis: > >> finally, https://hydra.gnu.org/build/3044681 (flash-image armhf) built. >> >> Can we put it on the website at https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/downlo= ad/ >> inside the GuixSD part? >> >> I think it would be nice to have something ready-to-go for ARM systems a= s well, >> and this would be a good start. Apart from the bootloader, everything s= hould >> work as-is in there. And the user can either keep the original bootload= er >> on the board or flash a new one after booting GuixSD - either in qemu or >> on a real machine. > > I agree that it would be nice, but to what extent is this image generic > to all ARM boards? My understanding is that images are necessarily > bound to a specific board. An armhf image should generally be able to support most modern 32-bit arm boards, and an aarch64 image should be able to support most 64-bit boards. At least to the extent that they are supported in linux-libre. As Danny said, the bootloader is board-specific. This would either be present in firmware on the board itself, or need to be added to the image itself or other boot media manually. For systems that use a modern u-boot, this should work if the image includes the generated /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf, and the initrd doesn't require any tweaks to the included modules. For EFI systems, it would probably require installing the appropriate grub-efi bits. For maximal compatibility, it would be best if both the relevent u-boot and EFI bits were installed; they don't necessarily conflict, and modern u-boot even has an EFI implementation (though may not work on many armhf systems). For comparison, the supported debian-installer images have a two-part image: https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/RE= ADME.concatenateable_images Which contains the board-specific bootloader firmware and the common parts as two separate images. This has the obvious downside of requiring more work from the end-user to assemble the correct image with the advantage being that the common parts (which is the vast majority of the image) are shipped only once. I could see it making sense for guix to generate a common image, and then using that common image as an input to generate an image with the bootloader installed, but maybe the substitute servers wouldn't build the generated images by default? live well, vagrant --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEARYKAB0WIQRlgHNhO/zFx+LkXUXcUY/If5cWqgUCW5aRmQAKCRDcUY/If5cW qr41AQCjP4xg4V8L20tR1qcz/du7h0knBKyxq4VVCVW9/gMSwQEA64X3EprJx30d lnIkNLwG64suSY+WS0IWhWZY5w+e7gw= =14uZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--