Gentoo on BPI-F3

Banana PI RISC-V Design BPI-F3/BPI-CM6(SpacemiT K1)
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I’m completing the instructions on how to build an image for the bpi-f3 in Gentoo from the ground up:

  • u-boot and opensbi right now do not have an ebuild, I’m using the latest bianbu forks for them
  • linux-6.1.15 linux-6.6.63 + vendor support is also externally built, with patches to enable sensors.
  • I leveraged crossdev directly to make building all faster.

Since gcc-15 might autovectorize RVV1.0 I’ll try again making a very experimental image enabling the vector extension and setting the vl to 256 since that’s what the CPU supports.

Packages for 20250410

  • linux
    • 6.6.63+
  • glibc
    • Gentoo 2.41-r1 (patchset 2)
  • gcc
    • gcc-14 (Gentoo 14.2.1_p20250301 p8) 14.2.1 20250301
    • gcc-15 (Gentoo 15.0.1_pre20250406-r2 p53) 15.0.1 20250406 (experimental) → known broken for RVV sadly
  • clang
    • clang version 20.1.2
  • rust
    • rustc 1.85.1 (4eb161250 2025-03-15) (gentoo)
  • python
    • Python 3.12.10

Packages for 20250411 RVV tryout

  • linux
    • 6.6.63+
  • glibc
    • Gentoo 2.41-r1 (patchset 2)
  • gcc
    • gcc-14 (Gentoo 14.2.1_p20250301 p8) 14.2.1 20250301
    • gcc-15 (Gentoo 15.0.9999) 15.0.1 20250411 (experimental) → used to build all the other packages
  • clang
    • clang version 20.1.2
  • rust
    • rustc 1.85.1 (4eb161250 2025-03-15) (gentoo)
  • python
    • Python 3.12.10

Downloads:

EDIT: I removed the older images.

3 Likes
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Cheers for your work. I got Gentoo working on mine a couple of days ago.

Thought id check your image out to see if I had missed anything obvious, but /etc/portage is empty? is this to be expected? I admit ive not booted it and just mounted it via kpartx to have a look but was curious.

Cheers

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The image is incomplete since I wanted to make sure it booted and didn’t populate it with the bits catalyst adds, it is missing the make.conf since it got created as a crossdev experiment.

Hopefully I’ll manage to complete it during this weekend.

If you have a working rootfs you may just update the kernel and if you want to risk a bit more try rebuilding with CFLAGS=-O3 -march=rv64gcv_zvl256b.

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Ah you mean -march=rv64gcv_zvl256b?

Quick question though, you had any luck getting X working? llvm 18 doesnt compile and 17 does but spits out a load of errors that I need to try and figure out.

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Yes, typo.

I did not try to use the frame buffer at all so far. I’ll try building it soon.

The scripts I’m preparing are/will be in GitHub - lu-zero/crossdev-stages: Build Gentoo stages leveraging crossdev, but just using a standard stage3 and rebuilding as needed did work well.

1 Like
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I got to test a bit more and I suggest to stay clear of rv64gcv_zvl256b, it seems to produce code that assumes it is ok to unaligned vector loads when it is not.

For those curious here is the upstream bug for gcc-14.

1 Like
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I updated a bit the build scripts and I have a bit more complete image here, help in refining both the image and the scripts welcome, but it should work well enough to install Gentoo in the board.

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here an up to date version based on bianbu-1.0.12, it should work on the 16GB-ram boards (if somebody can try please report back :)) Since the linux-6.6 version seems to have better performances I removed all the other images.

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here the version sporting the linux-6.6 plus my patch to have the thermal sensors exposed Commits · lu-zero/pi-linux · GitHub

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Now with the 2.0rc6 bianbu bootloader and kernel, glibc-2.40, gcc-14.2.1_p20240817, clang-18.1.8.

Known issue make sure to run ldconfig.

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Since I produce also the binpackages here you can find those produced while assembling the image. It makes very quick to update an already running system.

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I updated the image to the kernel bianbu 2.0rc7, now with clang-19.1.1, also the binpkgs moved to here

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I updated it to bianbu 2.0, still make sure to run ldconfig once you boot,

1 Like
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Now using the uboot and kernel 2.0.2 with a more recent clang and python

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New update, now built with gcc-15!

Trying building with -O3 -march=rv64gcv_zvl256b now.

2 Likes
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The current gcc snapshot managed to build pretty much all the packages besides curl, so please try the newest image just to test things.

1 Like