Help installing on Cubox-i/Arm Boards

Help installing on Cubox-i/Arm Boards

[ryan]

Hi all

First of all I am completely new to quix (I use parabola Gnu/linux-
libre), so my apologies if I ask some questions that might seem very
obvious.

I would like to build a disk image for a Cubox-i variant that I have,
it currently has nothing on it. If setup guix on my x86_64
device/laptop using the guided installer, can I build it from there
easily using the instructions here?:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Building-the-Installation-Image.html
I also see there is a binary tarball, but not sure what to do with it?

or am I jumping ahead? I see that uboot in guix is available for the
cubox-i, but I am not sure where I need to start?

Any help with getting guix setup on the armvh device would be most
useful and appreciated.

Many Thanks
Ryan

Re: Help installing on Cubox-i/Arm Boards

[Julien Lepiller]

Hi Ryan!

Installing on armhf/aarch64 SBCs is not easy. I'm not sure the graphical installer is available for these platforms.

The tarball you found is for installing Guix, the package manager, on top of another distro. It's not the distro itself.

This blog post might help figuring out what you need for generating an installer image for your board: https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2019/guix-on-an-arm-board/

For generating the correct image from x86, you'll need to cross-compile the installer with --target=arm-linux-gnueabihf (for armhf).

Good luck!

On May 4, 2022 6:56:26 AM GMT+02:00, ryan <rysa88@posteo.net> wrote:
>Hi all
>
>First of all I am completely new to quix (I use parabola Gnu/linux-
>libre), so my apologies if I ask some questions that might seem very
>obvious.
>
>I would like to build a disk image for a Cubox-i variant that I have,
>it currently has nothing on it. If setup guix on my x86_64
>device/laptop using the guided installer, can I build it from there
>easily using the instructions here?:
>https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Building-the-Installation-Image.html
>I also see there is a binary tarball, but not sure what to do with it?
>
>or am I jumping ahead? I see that uboot in guix is available for the
>cubox-i, but I am not sure where I need to start?
>
>Any help with getting guix setup on the armvh device would be most
>useful and appreciated.
>
>Many Thanks
>Ryan
>

Re: Help installing on Cubox-i/Arm Boards

[Vagrant Cascadian]

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On 2022-05-04, ryan wrote:
> I would like to build a disk image for a Cubox-i variant that I have,
> it currently has nothing on it.

Which variant? You'll really want one of the 4GB ram variants... it will
be slow regardless; there are very few substitutes available for armhf
at the moment, so you'll have to build almost everything yourself.

Even with offloading builds to a faster machine, it's likely going to be
a bit slow for some things (you still have to compute what you're asking
the other machine to build for you).


> If setup guix on my x86_64
> device/laptop using the guided installer, can I build it from there
> easily using the instructions here?:
> https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Building-the-Installation-Image.html

Not sure the installer is supported for armhf yet...


> I also see there is a binary tarball, but not sure what to do with it?

You could use the binary tarball to install guix on another OS as a
"foreign distro" installation, and then proceed to use "guix system init
YOURCONFIG.scm" to install Guix System.


> or am I jumping ahead? I see that uboot in guix is available for the
> cubox-i, but I am not sure where I need to start?

I did some basic testing when I added it some years ago, but haven't
maintained any cubox-i family systems with guix...


> Any help with getting guix setup on the armvh device would be most
> useful and appreciated.

It will definitely be a project; if you're primarily interested in
learning about armhf and are already familiar with guix and want to
learn more about the gritty details... it might be a good project.

If you just want something that will work easily... it will likely be
pretty frustrating.


Good luck!


live well,
  vagrant

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