Re: Pinebook install instructions?

[Harold Gutch <logix%foobar.franken.de@localhost>]

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 08:52:16PM -0700, Andy Ruhl wrote:
> I seem to be missing something.
> 
> I went to the invisible.ca/arm page to download a pinebook image but
> the link seems to be broken. I guess this is a live image?

Correct.


> I'm hoping to do an install onto the internal disk from an install
> kernel somehow, maybe booted from the microsd card? Is this even
> possible?

Depends what you mean when you say "possible".  I think what you're
looking for is something that boots (from micro-SD or USB), loads
sysinst and lets you install to the internal eMMC.  There is no
ready-to-boot image that allows that.

The images on invisible.ca are basically arm64.img.gz from an
evbarm-aarch64 build plus u-boot-pinebook and finally the Pinebook
.dtb file and bootaa64.efi on the FAT partition.

So what you are looking for is something like:  Put an install kernel
on an FFS file system on your SD card, install u-boot-pinebook to the
card (dd it to the right offset, I think that's sector 8), add
/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-a64-pinebook.dtb and /efi/boot/bootaa64.efi on
the FAT partition and boot that.


> I guess I'm just looking for install instructions for pinebook is all.

I think pretty much everybody just takes the image from invisible.ca,
dds that to micro-SD and boots that.  Then, if you want to, you dd
that to the internal eMMC (you can also do that in singleuser mode if
you prefer).

Even though I tend to use sysinst on the Raspberry Pi (via the
rpi_inst image), on the Pinebook I just took the image from
invisible.ca.


HTH,
  Harold