ArchLinuxARM For R2 - Preview 1

ArchLinuxARM For R2 - Preview 1

Neofetch

Firefox (Tried it to test)

Video (Tried it to test)

Editions

  • Server
  • LXQT

Updated to 5.4-rc1

How to install

Download the image/zip file from the download location. Verify that the download completed successfully.

After that, install Etcher ( sudo pacman -S etcher if on Archlinux/Manjaro) and burn it to an SD card (8 GB or larger).

Put the SD card into SD card slot and boot it up. The Device should recognise the SD card as a bootable device and boot from it.

On the first boot it will display an OEM installer. After you have made your choices it will reboot into your newly setup system. (This is Manjaro OEM Installer script which I ported to Arch)

There is one more login by alarm user/password = alarm/alarm

This login will be disabled in future builds.

What is Working

  • Booting
  • HDMI
  • Network ports (All are working, DHCP is enabled on all.)

What’s Not Working

  • Audio Over HDMI.
  • alarm login will not work on lxqt as the ownership is removed. (will remove the login in future)

You test and Let me know.

Credits:

  • Manjaro Arm Team for helping me with armv7 and their tools.
  • @frank-w for his R2 Kernel and his valuable time and support.
2 Likes

Hello BPI R2 Users,

I would like to know the use cases of R2 with ArchLinux, Please share your feedback whether I should maintain Server(Headless) or Desktop Environment (DE) Images. Is there any real use of DE for R2? If yes then I will maintain DE versions, Else only Server img.

Editions options

  • Server (Headless)
  • LXQT
  • XFCE

Please let me know.

Thanks.

imho only a basic server image is needed because everyone can install desktop-environment by himself (every user wants a different DE,but most DEs are too slow).

Yes but it is always better to have a desktop ready img for direct users. As Installing DE later is not so good experience in my case. As I tried installed lxqt on debian and cursor is super slow. But thanks for your recommendation. I can keep Server and LXQT if needed.

I also would use only server edition for R2. I plan to use it as a router/firewall not as a standard PC.

1 Like

@frank-w Can I dd this SD card img to mmc to boot it from the mmc ?

On r2 you can use sd-card img with emmc,but you need to change uboot-config (partition 0:1 instead of 1:1 and root) and fstab (change to root) and flash preloader to boot0-block (maybe change hw-partitionlayout needed).preloader and partition-layout needs to be done only once

I get this,

But

Where is this one?

uenv.txt on bpi-boot you’ve created for bootargs

Yes that was just for entering in rescue mode. But I am not using it anymore. What should I add in the uEnv to make the partition 0:1 ?

Look how partition and root are defined in my uenv.txt (repo) and change it to the other device

1 Like

Ok Thanks. I will follow that.

Updated to Latest Arch Image with 5.4-rc1 Kernel

It is supposed to have wifi(AP) working but it is still in WIP mode.

Users can Try and test it.

Arch Linux Server Image - 5.4-rc1

Working:

  • HDMI
  • PowerOff
  • LAN0-3
  • WAN
  • WIFI(WIP) need custom firmware and scripts - I plan to make it as a pkg and install it in the future img by default.

Please try and get back with bug and feedback’s.

@cioby23 Can you try the latest version and share the experience and feedback please?

Yes I would like to install it and do some testing but I have very limited time today. Tomorrow after work I’ll try and do some tests.

Update: I had a little time today and booted the Arch image with success, but I could not test the Internet connection since the pppoe/ppp package is not installed in the provided Arch image. So in this case will I need to move the PPPoE connection to another router and connect the BananaPi-R2 behind it using DHCP then install the PPPoE related packages and after that doing some tests (sometime in this week).

1 Like

@spikerguy Hi, thanks a lot for putting this image together! I recently got my BPi R2 and just wanted to share my initial experience. Installed using your latest image and for sure HDMI and Ethernet work fine (got an IP just fine w/ dhcpcd on wan port).

I was able to run pacman -Syu successfully and install xorg, everything seems to work fine so far.

Are there any packages that cannot be upgraded without breaking hw support?

A starter DE image would be great for beginners (e.g. LXDE), although I personally am ok with a headless image since I set up my own desktop environment anyways. I will share a guide with full system setup as soon as I am done and share more feedback on which devices are working and which are not.

As a side note, I am having a bit of a hard time following the progress of mainline kernel support for R2 vs custom kernels. This is definitely an area for improvement in the BPi community :slight_smile:

R2 will have custom kernel only as it is mtk and need a lot of custom codes to make things work, while mtk team and frank is trying their best to push things to mainline.

Btw this is a very old img and it won’t break as hardware support nor it will add any support. As I never updated the kernel for it after that release. You can still get all updated packages from the arch repo. Thanks for testing.