Create NixOS System image on RISC-V VisionFive (Embedded Linux via Nix/NixOS)

[matthewcroughan]

I made a youtube video that explains this in more detail

Embedded Linux Using Nix/NixOS on the VisionFive RISC-V SBC

TL;DR

1. Flash the bootloader with nix run github:matthewcroughan#flashBootloader
2. nix build github:matthewcroughan/nixcfg#visionfive-cross
3. Flash the result in ./result to an SD card
4. Boot it!

If you want to customise it, modify the configuration.nix in this template, and watch the video to learn a bit more. If you have any questions, please post them here!

[Selina]

[dramforever]

List of GitHub repos related to running NixOS on VisionFive V1

NixOS Building parts:

• https://github.com/zhaofengli/nixos-riscv64: includes packages and SD card images for the VisionFive V1 as well
• https://github.com/ius/jh7100: various VisionFive/JH7100 specific packages

Example NixOS configuration repos

• GitHub - MatthewCroughan/visionfive-nix (that’s OP)
  • github:MatthewCroughan/visionfive-nix#visionfive-cross
  • github:MatthewCroughan/visionfive-nix#visionfive-native
• GitHub - NickCao/nixos-riscv
  • github:NickCao/nixos-riscv#visionfive
• GitHub - fufexan/visionfive-nix: Everything Nix for the VisionFive board
  • github:fufexan/visionfive-nix#visionfive-cross-x86
  • github:fufexan/visionfive-nix#visionfive-native
• GitHub - dramforever/nixos-visionfive: My VisionFive NixOS config
  • github:dramforever/nixos-visionfive#misaki

The Flake URLs listed here can be used with the --flake option of nixos-rebuild. So for example to build my configuration just:

$ nixos-rebuild build --flake github:dramforever/nixos-visionfive#misaki

Or equivalently without using the nixos-rebuild script:

$ nix build github:dramforever/nixos-visionfive#nixosConfigurations.misaki.config.system.build.toplevel

No need to clone my repo: Nix will do this for you.

Of the configurations listed, those ending in -native are meant to be run on a machine that’s either natively riscv64 or has qemu-riscv64 binfmt configured. Others will build on a x64 machine and cross to riscv64.