Re: U-Boot for Raspberry Pi

[phodina <phodina@protonmail.com>]

Hi Stefan,

On Monday, November 1st, 2021 at 12:09 AM, Stefan <stefan-guix@vodafonemail.de> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> There is already a patch series available since May – patiently awaiting a review –, which brings support for the Raspberry Pi. It even supports booting via NFS, which helps to avoid all the common troubles with microSD cards.

Thanks for your amazing work! I've applied the patches and it builds the system.

>
> For the usual mircoSD card installation just partition and format it as usual, and put the well known bootloader blob on the FAT partition. Then do a ‘guix system init config.scm /mnt/microsd’. The patch series contains an example configuration at ‘gnu/system/examples/raspberry-pi-64.tmpl’.


However, I ran into several issues.

Firstly it's hard to run the init command as it requires root.
What I did is the following:

sudo guix environment --pure guix --ad-hoc coreutils findutils which

This gives me pure environment with the patches and root access.

Do you have different suggestion on how to invoke the guix system init command?

Secondly I have to run the command to init the system on the microSD card with the following flag --skip-checks:

[env]# ./pre-inst-env guix system init -s aarch64-linux gnu/system/examples/raspberry-pi-64.tmpl /mnt  --skip-checks

Otherwise I have to build with the following initrd config:

(initrd-modules (append (list "mmc_block" "rtsx_pci_sdmmc" "rtsx_pci")
   ;;                             %base-initrd-modules))

But adding these the build fails. Thought they might be needed as the kernel needs to access the blocks on microSD.

Another issue were certificates:

...
initializing operating system under '/mnt'...
copying to '/mnt'...  [#########################################################                                                    ]i/o error: /gnu/store/j76446v1asknzjl5lvzp9mnrg8gxl24d-nss-certs-3.59/etc/ssl/certs/NetLock_Arany_=Class_Gold=_F??tan??s??tv??ny:2.6.73.65.44.228.0.16.pem: No such file or directory
copying to '/mnt'...  [##################################################################                                           ]i/o error: /gnu/store/db3kp42msgw9f53jk5hvp2bgsaq6jdyv-profile/etc/ssl/certs/NetLock_Arany_=Class_Gold=_F??tan??s??tv??ny:2.6.73.65.44.228.0.16.pem: No such file or directory
copying to '/mnt'...
populating '/mnt'...

Lastly the init fails as the FAT file system not supporting symlinks.

guix system: error: symlink: Operation not permitted: "/boot/efi/gnu/store"

I formatted the microSD card with FAT32 and Ext4 partitions.
The FAT32 partition is mounted to /boot.

Could you please help me as I've might done something incorrectly?

>
> Take a look here: http://issues.guix.gnu.org/48314#10
>
> In hope to get more attention and interest for a review, allow me to add two side notes.
>
> Ever in need for a Guix System on an USB thump drive? Give the new ‘grub-efi-netboot-removable-bootloader’ a try instead of ‘grub-efi-bootloader’. It is not only usable for booting over network.
>
> Ever in need to quickly modify the kernel Linux? Give the new function ‘modify-linux’ a try. For the Raspberry this is needed to get the kernel linux-libre working. (By the way, would Guix System be the first distribution using a libre kernel on the Raspberry?)
>
> For example to enable NFS root functionality for virtual machines, use a kernel definition like this in your operating-system definition:
>
> (kernel (modify-linux #:configs '("CONFIG_E1000=y"
>
> "CONFIG_ROOT_NFS=y"
>
> "CONFIG_NFS_FS=y"
>
> "CONFIG_NFS_V4=y")))
>
> Bye
>
> Stefan