HOW TO - install linux on emmc without etcher or USB adapter

[dukla2000]

Thought I would log a confirmation it is perfectly possible to setup a new ROCKPro64 with linux without:

1) etcher (or the Pine utility) - there is no aarch64 version of etcher which is kinda limiting for those of us already using arm systems for our daily driver!
2) I didn't order the Pine emmc/USB adapter to save money and reduce the order value/import tax hit.

The steps are pretty simple: yeah they rely on dd heavily and most of the time it works fine for me.

1) Download your image of choice, I went with bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz
2) Unzip the image,

Code:

$unxz bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img.xz

3) Get an sdcard (pref 2GB or 4GB, see step 6 below) in your pc. Check where it is and dd the image to it. Mine was /dev/sda so

Code:

$sudo dd if=bionic-minimal-rockpro64-0.7.9-1067-arm64.img of=/dev/sda bs=4M

4) I find my 'bad dd flashes' can usually be sorted at this stage by removing and reinserting the sdcard and running fsck on the dos and linux partitions. Any problems (apart from not removed cleanly bit on dos partition) then repeat step 3 above.
5) Insert (blank/new) emmc in ROCKPro64, and sdcard, and boot. Should come up fine on the sdcard. And resize the / partition automatically.
6) As per Bullet64 instructions here, copy the image from the sdcard to the emmc. Make sure you have a small sdcard to keep the elapsed time of this step under control. And it must be smaller than the emmc else you will be in trouble.

Code:

$sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=4M

7) Reboot and manually resize the / partition

Code:

rock64@rockpro64:/usr/local/sbin$ sudo ./resize_rootfs.sh

Should be done. Enjoy