Fedora 27 on Pine64

[heatfanjohn]

No editing function for my post found, therefore I add the link to the official Fedora download page for alternative architectures here:

https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/

As the Pine64 has an aarch64/arm64 CPU take the "Fedora Minimal" image from the "ARM aarch64 Architecture" section.

Success!  I was able to get Fedora 28 Workstation to run on my Pine A64!

I used the method described by @cmuellner using Fedora running on a Dell laptop:

Code:

# Install the fedora-arm-image-installer and Fedora uboot-images-armv8 package
sudo dnf install uboot-images-armv8 fedora-arm-installer

# Install downloaded Fedora 28 Workstation image to SD card
sudo fedora-arm-image-installer --image=Fedora-Workstation-28-1.1.aarch64.raw.xz --target=pine64_plus --media=/dev/mmcblk0

I confirmed that the `ln` link to the DTB file was no longer needed.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that there was a bug in the U-Boot used that caused Fedora to only occasionally complete the boot.  The bug in U-Boot caused an erroneous `hd0` error to occur while GRUB was loading Fedora.  

After trying several SD cards and doing research on how U-Boot and Grub work, I found that this was a KNOWN ISSUE with Fedora 28.  Unfortunately the "Intermittent Boot Errors for Pine 64" didn't show up in any of my Google searches.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F2...oot_errors

Apparently the Allwinner A64 ARM chip has a timer issue where the last 11 bits of the timer value will erroneously be either all zero or one bits.  This can cause time to jump forward and worse go backwards which can mess up timeout and other code.

Code was added to both U-Boot and the Linux kernel to detect this and ignore these erroneous values.

For U-Boot you need uboot-tools-2018.03-6.fc28

I performed a `dnf upgrade uboot-tools` and then ran `update-uboot` to update my SD card.

Code:

[johnma@mypine64 ~]$ cat /etc/*release
Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight)
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="28 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=28
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f28"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 28 (Workstation Edition)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:28"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=28
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=28
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation
Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight)
Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight)
[johnma@mypine64 ~]$ uname -a
Linux mypine64 4.16.3-301.fc28.aarch64 #1 SMP Mon Apr 23 21:45:59 UTC 2018 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
[johnma@mypine64 ~]$