Rock64

The hardware described over here is untested by us but should work in theory. The instructions are coming from the Archlinux ARM wiki, we just placed it over here for your convenience.

Flash to a micro SD card

Replace sdX in the following instructions with the device name for the SD card as it appears on your computer.

We advise using the EndeavourOS ISO install, this way you don’t have to remove directories and files created needed during the flash process. It also prevents your daily driver from borking or breaking the system.

Boot the installer in ms-dos/MBR mode, not UEFI otherwise, it will not work and once the Live environment is booted close all open apps, especially the Thunar file manager, insert the SD card and open the terminal.

The terminal

Zero the beginning of the SD card:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=8

Start fdisk to partition the SD card:

$ fdisk /dev/sdX

At the fdisk prompt, create the new partition:

  • Type o. This will clear out any partitions on the drive.
  • Type p to list partitions. There should be no partitions left.
  • Type n, then p for primary, 1 for the first partition on the drive, 4096 for the first sector, and then press ENTER to accept the default last sector.
  • Write the partition table and exit by typing w.

Create the ext4 filesystem:

$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1

Mount the filesystem:

$ mkdir root
$ mount /dev/sdX1 root

Download and extract the root filesystem (as root, not via sudo):

# wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz
# bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C root

Download the boot.scr script for U-Boot and place it in the /boot directory:

# wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/rockchip/boot/rock64/boot.scr -O root/boot/boot.scr

Unmount the partition:

# umount root

Download and install the U-Boot bootloader:

# wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/rockchip/boot/rock64/rksd_loader.img
# wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/rockchip/boot/rock64/u-boot.itb
# dd if=rksd_loader.img of=/dev/sdX seek=64 conv=notrunc
# dd if=u-boot.itb of=/dev/sdX seek=16384 conv=notrunc

Now you can exit the EndeavourOS live environment and remove the SD card.

Rock64

  1. Insert the micro SD card into the Rock64, connect ethernet, and apply 5V power.
  2. Use the serial console or SSH to the IP address given to the board by your router.
    • Login as the default user alarm with the password alarm.
    • The default root password is root.
    • HDMI video is not yet supported in the mainline kernel.

Initialize the pacman keyring and populate the Arch Linux ARM packagesigning keys:

$ pacman-key --init
$ pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm

Install the U-Boot package

Remove the boot.scr file manually downloaded previously:

$ rm /boot/boot.scr

Install the U-Boot package:

$ pacman -Sy uboot-rock64

When prompted, press y and hit enter to write the latest bootloader to the micro SD card.

Now you are ready to install EndeavourOS

Endeavour OS install

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