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+TITLE: RockPro64: booting OS from SATA, installing Arch ARM
+DATE: 2021-11-17
+TAGS: rockpro64 sbc u-boot archlinuxarm aarch64 software
+-------------------------
+If U-boot problems with RockPro64 are fixed then most of this cumbersome setup
+will become unnecessary and this article will get 5 times shorter. Right now it
+might be easier to use [this](https://github.com/sigmaris/u-boot/) fork, author
+claims SATA support (I didn't try it). I chose upstream U-boot to send bugs to
+developers.
+
+Currently the `master` branch of U-boot has 2 problems with RockPro64 - SATA
+doesn't start and the board is not booting since commit [3ae64582]
+(https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/3ae64582fb8ceead4fc464cd2055eb3eaef78ccc),
+hangs after loading the kernel. [Wrote to developers]
+(https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2021-November/466976.html) about the
+second issue, there seems to be some interest. If it's fixed I'll report SATA
+issue next. There is a
+[patch with PCIe code from OpenBSD]
+(https://github.com/sigmaris/u-boot/commit/c592735731642d299b25cef1329aad4d91d92e8c),
+but the description is not encouraging.
+
+So right now booting upstream U-boot is rather tricky:
+
+* U-boot is on SD card
+* There is a small flash drive in USB2 port with ext4 filesystem to store
+  `/extlinux/extlinux.conf`, kernel and initrd
+* Other partitions (`/`, `swap`, `/home` etc) are on SATA devices
+
+Commands below are for Arch or Parabola on amd64. There are cross-compilation
+packages in Arch repos - let's install them:
+
+  # pacman -S arm-none-eabi-gcc aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc dtc
+
+Download latest ATF release (currently `arm_cca_v0.3`), remove binary files and
+build:
+
+  curl -O https://codeload.github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware/tar.gz/refs/tags/arm_cca_v0.3
+  tar -xzf arm_cca_v0.3
+  cd arm-trusted-firmware-*
+  find . -name '*.bin' -exec rm -vf '{}' \;
+  make realclean
+  make CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- PLAT=rk3399
+  cd ..
+
+Now we can build U-boot 2020.07, to boot from SD we need `u-boot-rockchip.bin`:
+
+  curl -O https://ftp.denx.de/pub/u-boot/u-boot-2020.07.tar.bz2
+  tar -xjf u-boot-2020.07.tar.bz2
+  cd u-boot-2020.07/
+  export BL31=../arm-trusted-firmware-*/build/rk3399/release/bl31/bl31.elf
+  export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- CC=aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc
+  make mrproper
+  make rockpro64-rk3399_defconfig
+  make
+
+A convenient distro to get started is Armbian. Download Bullseye [from
+here](https://www.armbian.com/rockpro64/), write it to SD card
+(`/dev/sde` here, needs to be 4Gb or larger):
+
+  unxz -dc Armbian_21.08.1_Rockpro64_bullseye_current_5.10.60.img.xz > /dev/sde
+
+Boot RockPro64 with it, download ArchLinux ARM "Generic" root tarball [from
+here] (https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/generic). Create a 20Gb
+partition on SATA device, mount it to `/mnt`, unpack Arch there:
+
+  tar -xzf ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt
+
+I wrote the following steps from memory, please contact me if something doesn't
+work, I'll try to fix it. Mount the filesystem on USB flash drive to `/mnt_usb`,
+move boot files from SATA to USB so that U-boot can see them:
+
+	mkdir /mnt_usb/boot_arch
+	cp -r /mnt/boot/* /mnt_usb/boot_arch/
+	lsblk --fs -oMOUNTPOINTS,UUID|awk '/^\/mnt_usb\s/ {print $2}' # UUID_USB, see below
+
+Add entries to `/etc/fstab`: 1) to mount the filesystem on USB and 2) to bind
+the `boot_arch` directory on USB filesystem to `/boot` so that `pacman` uses it
+during kernel upgrades:
+
+	UUID=<UUID_USB> /bootUSB ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
+	/bootUSB/boot_arch /boot    none    bind 0 0
+
+Add Arch boot entry to `extlinux/extlinux.conf` on USB filesystem using PARTUUID
+of SATA partition (get it with `lsblk -o+PARTUUID`):
+
+  timeout 60
+  menu title Muh boot options
+  default Arch_Linux_SSD
+
+  label Arch_Linux_SSD
+    kernel /boot_arch/Image
+    append root=PARTUUID=111111-1111-111 nowatchdog console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty1 rootwait rw earlyprintk LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+    fdtdir /boot_arch/dtbs
+    initrd /boot_arch/initramfs-linux.img
+
+Write U-boot to SD card, if you have a spare one (any size) - use it so you will
+still have a working one with Armbian. In this example SD card is `/dev/sde`,
+**check it on your PC** with `lsblk`:
+
+  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde bs=4096 count=2600
+  dd if=/path/u-boot-git/u-boot-rockchip.bin of=/dev/sde seek=64
+  sync
+
+Insert it into RockPro64, power on - if all went well you'll see U-boot 2020.07
+and Arch will boot from SSD. Add `pacman` Arch ARM keys as described [here]
+(https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/generic).
+
+Download `linux-libre-firmware` from [Parabola repo]
+(https://www.parabola.nu/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-firmware/), install
+it instead of `linux-firmware`:
+
+  RemoteFileSigLevel = Never # in /etc/pacman.conf
+  pacman -U https://www.parabola.nu/packages/libre/x86_64/parabola-keyring/download
+  RemoteFileSigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional # in /etc/pacman.conf
+  pacman -U linux-libre-firmware-1:1.4-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
+
+I added `-mtune=cortex-a72.cortex-a53` to `CFLAGS` in `/etc/makepkg.conf` so
+GCC optimizes `makepkg`-built packages for this CPU architecture.
+
+What works:
+
+* Bluetooth (headphones)
+* 1080p video playback
+* WiFi 802.11n Access Point
+* Sharing Internet connection via 1 Gbit/s cable (crossover)
+* [Battle for Wesnoth](https://www.wesnoth.org/): it's a big project and it's
+  not in Arch ARM repos, so I decided to build it, see if it'll work on aarch64.
+  Works like a charm: `asp export wesnoth ; cd wesnoth ; sed -i
+  's/^arch=.*/arch=(aarch64)/' PKGBUILD ; makepkg`, profit. Thanks to Wesnoth
+  developers for portable code.  Made a thread about it on Arch ARM, if I have
+  time will make a github PR to add Wesnoth to *Community* repo, it looks simple
+  enough
+* All the usual software I use on a home PC
+
+Next on the list -
+[linux-libre](https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/). I'll have to
+either build it for Arch/aarch64 or switch to a distro where it's already
+packaged. This will take some time.