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bimon

Member

Registered: 2019-09-09

Posts: 172  

Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

This has been tested on Cubietruck board.

Devuan v9 ASCII in text only mode with a minimum amount of services enabled, actually only SSH, eudev and tty for login sessions.

The latest backports for Devuan stable applied.

The latest Libre deblobbed kernel v5.3.1 is bootable fine from an U-boot taken from the latest prebuilt Arch Linux for this board.

May be it can save a few days or weeks of time of learning for newbies on how to get Devuan ARM bootable with the latest kernel.

And it is fully verifiable by debsums:

wajig integrity  2>&1

passes fine

Download URL:

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/5d1U/4EwwaFs5D

Just unrar and dd it to a microSD (which is at least 4Gb in size or more) and insert into the board to boot.

dd if=devuan_ascii_for_cubietruck_dd.img of=/dev/sdX

Login: root
Password: devuan

Anyone could see just an idea about how to boot from this image and build his own by himself.

Actually it is tested only on Cubietruck yet, and missing many dtbs in /mnt/boot/boot/dtbs directory, just copy them manually from /mnt/boot/_other if needed. VGA port does not work, but HDMI to VGA adapter works fine even with a very old 15" display via its VGA port.

It may be a good start to install and configure some services like e-mail, TOR, I2P, chat (jabber or matrix) on a relatively more secure board like ARMv7 is compared say to X86 (which has many different backdoors and flaws) with a more secure kernel like deblobbed (without proprietary firmwares) Libre kernel v5x.

The only blob you get when running this config is a BROM (Boot ROM BLOB about 32Kbytes in size or about it) which is flashed into the SoC chip on the factory and it cannot be modified by end users at least without secret proprietary documentation.  It is one of the most deblobbed things which can be got for that money ($10-$100).

Hopefully it will be used by good guys for example for defending human rights.

Good Luck.

Last edited by bimon (2020-05-16 18:04:34)

bimon

Member

Registered: 2019-09-09

Posts: 172  

Re: Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

Can anyone please suggest a good small and light boot loader to choose a kernel like GRUB on X86?

It seems GRUB2 cannot be run without EFI?

Does not it look insecure to boot so many layers like complex EFI and then complex GRUB2 from it?

I would like an easily customizeable boot loader like grub1 or grub4dos which would be started from U-boot boot.scr instead of a kernel.

Easy syntax to add more kernels and other executables would be very welcome.

The idea is to get a chain of boot loaders like this:

BROM (in SoC chip) -> U-boot->Something like grub4dos with customizable menus -> choosen kernel, preferably capable to start any OS (compatible with a specific board) like OpenBSD or Linux

Last edited by bimon (2019-09-26 12:37:36)

alupoj

Member

Registered: 2019-01-25

Posts: 80  

Re: Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

tuxd3v

Member

Registered: 2019-11-14

Posts: 183  

Re: Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

Can anyone please suggest a good small and light boot loader to choose a kernel like GRUB on X86?

You can use extlinux, its small, and you only need its config in place:
/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

Uboot will pick him

---

Best Regards,
tux

bimon

Member

Registered: 2019-09-09

Posts: 172  

Re: Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

Can anyone please suggest a good small and light boot loader to choose a kernel like GRUB on X86?

You can use extlinux, its small, and you only need its config in place:
/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

Uboot will pick him

Thanks a lot! Will try it later.

extlinux loader does not need EFI or something like it of ARM?

What about OpenBSD? Is there a loader supporting different OS kernels on ARM at least Linux and OpenBSD,
though more OSes would be welcome too, e.g. like FreeBSD.

Last edited by bimon (2020-05-17 12:48:51)

bimon

Member

Registered: 2019-09-09

Posts: 172  

Re: Devuan v9 for ARMv7 AllWinner - generic Libre kernel v5.3.1

I wonder if depthcharge from ARM chromebooks can be used on ARMv7 single boards too?

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Creating_b … ed_devices