Arch Linux Image for VisionFive 2

tommythorn · February 5, 2023, 9:17am

FYI, I’ll not have time for a few days so certainly don’t do this on my behalf.
PS: Curious about the clang direction. I tested SPECint2k6 with gcc vs clang and gcc clearly won.

omac777 · February 5, 2023, 3:52pm

same here. Please don’t be in a rush cwt. I would just prefer another image to try and test it for you. I can wait. I’m pre-occupied with my 7-year old son anyways.

cwt · February 5, 2023, 4:06pm

aha! Totally understand you, mine 4 yo daughter and 1 yo son.

majortom · February 6, 2023, 5:08am

@cwt Thanks for your great work! I’m learning image building. Could you open source your scripts to build this image or point to some reference materials? Thanks!

cwt · February 8, 2023, 2:46am

Guys, I think I found the issue with my cwt6 image. The DTB files saved to /boot/boot/dtbs are reverting to the previous version every time I reboot. I believe my SD card has failed! Please wait while I verify this.

Update: It is verified. I’m switching to a new SD card.
Updat2: Somehow, my dtb file on the new SD also got changed. Something must overwrite my dtb. U-Boot?

cwt · February 8, 2023, 8:33am

@majortom Hi, I do not have a script, I did it almost manually. My initial idea was trying to use the btrfs on Debian Image 69, but then I realized that the Debian image is fixed to a snapshot version of debian which is pretty old. So I tried to use my custom kernel on Arch Linux which already published the rootfs on https://riscv.mirror.pkgbuild.com/.

By the way, there are some more details before the Arch’s rootfs can boot for the first time on VF2. I will document it later on my blog, and will post the link here.

omac777 · February 8, 2023, 9:32am

I was told u-boot-update does something with the dtb file.
extlinux.conf is generated by u-boot-update. extlinux.conf points to the dtb file.

cwt · February 9, 2023, 8:51am

I just upload the hot fix cwt6.1 to my Google Drive, and Naver MYBOX.

You can just download the Kernel file and then extract it somewhere, and copy only boot/* to a flash drive then copy it over your /boot/ in cwt6 image.

Please post a comment if this fix your ethernet problem.

Thank you.

und · February 9, 2023, 11:44am

cwt6.1 fixes the ethernet for me.
Thanks!

rvalles · February 9, 2023, 1:12pm

Just installed arch to my new m2 ssd.

I partitioned and unpacked arch’s risc-v tarball using starfive’s debian image, then chrooted into it and updated it.

Then I copied and set up cwt’s kernel.

However, my usual encrypted swap setup doesn’t work:

Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd[1]: Starting Cryptography Setup for swap...
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd-cryptsetup[279]: Cannot initialize device-mapper. Is dm_mod kernel module loaded?
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd-cryptsetup[279]: Set cipher aes, mode cbc-essiv:sha256, key size 256 bits for device /dev/nvme0n1p1.
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd-cryptsetup[279]: Cannot initialize device-mapper. Is dm_mod kernel module loaded?
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd-cryptsetup[279]: Cannot use device swap, name is invalid or still in use.
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd-cryptsetup[279]: Failed to activate with key file '/dev/urandom': Operation not supported
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd[1]: systemd-cryptsetup@swap.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd[1]: systemd-cryptsetup@swap.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Feb 09 12:51:40 StarFive systemd[1]: Failed to start Cryptography Setup for swap.

The kernel seems to have been built w/o device manager support (or something related is broken), and thus I can have no encrypted swap (or encrypted anything).

@cwt could you look into this for new release?

My intent, besides encrypting swap, was to set up LUKS for my /home partition. Any serious use is gated on having this working.

cwt · February 9, 2023, 1:48pm

I didn’t enable device manager, I can enable it and build a new kernel.

rvalles · February 9, 2023, 1:54pm

It’s no hurry, but it’d be nice to have it enabled for the next one

rvalles · February 9, 2023, 2:11pm

Somehow, I expected X to just work via modesetting or fbdev drivers. But it does not.

What did you do to get X working? I would like to try and do it myself, to understand the steps.

cwt · February 9, 2023, 3:39pm

I did get weston working on wayland. I never tried X. I don’t think it will working out of the box without Starfive patches. It may required binary blob too, which I don’t expected it to work because the glibc on Arch is newer than Debian.

rvalles · February 10, 2023, 1:27am

Installing the xf86-video-fbdev driver wasn’t enough.

Section "Device"
    Identifier             "Screen0"
    Driver                 "fbdev"
    Option "fbdev"         "/dev/fb0"
EndSection

It needed to be told this much.

So now I have X. Unaccelerated, slow, but X nevertheless.

cwt · February 10, 2023, 6:35am

@rvalles I just uploaded an experimental kernel that I’ve been working on. It’s quite stable and I’ve been using it as my daily driver for a week now (24x7). DM, DM_CRYPT, and other DM_* modules are enabled.

The kernel was built with LLVM:

$ make -j4 LLVM=1 CC="clang -mcpu=sifive-u74 -mtune=sifive-7-series"

So if you want to build any external module or driver, please add LLVM=1 to your make command.

Google Drive: Experimental - Google 云端硬盘
Naver MYBOX: 네이버 MYBOX

Extract them to / and then edit your /boot/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

rvalles · February 10, 2023, 7:22am

Grabbed your sources, gave menuconfig a once-over and I’m now building them on the VisionFive 2 itself.

It was about time I tried building a kernel on this thing. We’ll see how it goes.

At 40m, 56.3C CPU, 43.9C SSD.

thefossguy · February 10, 2023, 9:08am

@cwt The latest image ArchLinux-VF2_515_v2.8.0-cwt6.1.img (not experimental image) has two flaws…

The extracted image is 15GB. Even though most of it is empty, dd will still write additional 12-ish GBs to the disk and cause extra wear and tear. It is also very time consuming. Please trim the image down, 15 GB is too much. I guess you can get away with 1200MB only
The device tree is still being corrupted somehow… The reboot +0 command does not work. I can see on UART that the board is stuck and the last kernel message is: reboot: Restarting system with command '+0'. Edit: The reset button doesn’t work either

Can you share your build scripts? Maybe I can chip in, I too prefer Arch over Debian

rvalles · February 10, 2023, 10:35am

It wasn’t ready. Something actually failed.

Now I see why salsa20 was disabled .

rvalles · February 10, 2023, 10:42am

I didn’t even write down the image.

With losetup and some parameter, you get subdevices for each partition. I mounted and took what I needed from /boot, and used the official root tarball from the arch risc-v port website.

Disk images are the problem. Just use tarballs instead.