Arch Linux ARM on the Rock64 V3

[justinweiss]

I just picked up a Rock64, and wanted to put Arch Linux ARM on it to reuse setup scripts I wrote for another SBC that was already running it.

The instructions didn't work for me -- u-boot failed, I would assume because of the SD changes in the V3 revision. Research made it sound like mainline u-boot should work, but I didn't have any luck with it. master failed with a hang trying to access the SD card, and earlier revisions failed with a "Card did not respond to voltage select!" error.

Armbian did work, and I figured all I needed was really a working u-boot, so I bashed together the u-boot from Armbian with the root filesystem from Arch Linux ARM, and it booted!

I would still love to figure out what I was doing wrong with my u-boot builds (following the instructions from here: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8174), but it seems like it's worked out. Assuming things don't burst into flames or anything.

For reference, this was the process that worked for me:

It's mostly the same as the basic install instructions: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8...hip/rock64

• In step 1, instead of zeroing out, I ran `dd if=/path/to/Armbian_bionic.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=32`
  

• Steps 2-8 were unchanged
  
• Step 9 was skipped
  
• Steps 10-12 were unchanged
  
• Skipped updating u-boot through Arch
  

[koutheir]

Thank you for the heads up!

I also run into the issue, but I think ArchLinuxARM fixed their flashing procedure by providing different files to store in the initial non-partitioned space (now called "rksd_loader.img" and "u-boot.itb", see "https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/rockchip/rock64").

I simply stored these files into the SD card as the procedure step (9) says:
dd if=rksd_loader.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 seek=64 conv=notrunc
dd if=u-boot.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0 seek=16384 conv=notrunc

After that the board booted normally and I didn't see any loss of data.

[justinweiss]

I also run into the issue, but I think ArchLinuxARM fixed their flashing procedure by providing different files to store in the initial non-partitioned space (now called "rksd_loader.img" and "u-boot.itb", see "https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/rockchip/rock64").

Nice! That must be brand new, I don't remember seeing it even a few weeks ago.

I'm now running a self-built uboot after running into the Kernel 5.8 issue mentioned on this board, and it seems to work OK. May switch back to this one if it runs into problems.