Re: Guix on the MNT Reform

[Christine Lemmer-Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

Fredrik Salomonsson <plattfot@posteo.net> writes:

> Christine Lemmer-Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
>> Hi!  Well my MNT Reform arrived.  I'd like to start putting Guix on it
>> but I'm kind of low on time right now...
>
> I got mine last week!

Neat!

>> I wonder if anyone else has started making progress towards this?
>
>> What I'd love: a tutorial that says "here are the steps to make an sd
>> card you can boot your reform with"!
>
> I'm planning to start hacking on that once I've found a NVMe that works.
> The XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB I bought for it had serious issues with access
> times. Next up is to buy a WD Blue SN550 1TB and hopefully that will
> work.

Cool!  Hope it gets up and running soon.  In the meanwhile, some local
notes...

It looks like the relevant info to get going is here:

  https://mntre.com/reform2/handbook/advanced.html#system-boot

There's a script to compile a custom u-boot:

  https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-system-image/-/blob/main/reform2-imx8mq/mkuboot.sh

#+BEGIN_SRC bash
if [ ! -d u-boot ]
then
  echo "Cloning U-Boot..."
  git clone --depth 1 https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-boundary-uboot.git u-boot
fi

cd u-boot
cp mntreform-config .config

export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
export ARCH=arm

# build rescue u-boot first (loads kernel from eMMC)
make -j$(nproc) flash.bin KCPPFLAGS='-DMNTREFORM_BOOT_EMMC'
cp flash.bin flash-rescue.bin

# build normal u-boot second (loads kernel from SD card)
make -j$(nproc) flash.bin

cd ..
#+END_SRC

So that doesn't look to complicated.

Here's the custom u-boot:

  https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-boundary-uboot

It says:

  "Fork of the vendor (Boundary Devices) u-boot for Reform 2, with
  minor tweaks. The goal is to migrate to mainstream u-boot or barebox
  ASAP. The main impediment so far is the 4GB RAM config."

So we probably want to make a u-boot-mnt-reform in
gnu/packages/bootloaders.scm

So we probably want to use "guix system image" and then add:

  gnu/system/images/mnt-reform.scm

Ideally in the end we should be able to do:

  guix system image --image-type=mnt-reform my-os.scm

So yeah, the rest of the pieces to figuring it out seem to be all here:

  https://mntre.com/reform2/handbook/advanced.html#system-boot

It *seems* like this should all be possible...

 - Christine