Archlinux Arm on IGEPv2

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Just a few notes about the installation of ArchLinuxARM on a IGEPv2 card, this is very easy as tarballs are already provided to do the job.

Formatting the SD Card

The first step is to format the SD card, I’m using an 8GB card, I create two partitions on it, one for the boot in FAT and the other in EXT to host the root filesystem. Here’s a script to do the job, this is inspired from a script of Graeme Gregory.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# s. rannou <mxs@sbrk.org>
#
# a script to setup an SD card for IGEPv2 (bender), may be harmful.

device=/dev/sdb

# formats the sd cards into two partitions (boot and rootfs)
function prepare-card {
    echo "erasing partition layout..."
    dd if=/dev/zero of=$device bs=1024 count=1024
    size=$(sudo fdisk -l | grep "Disk ${device}:" | awk '// {print $5; }')
    echo "creating partitions..."
    if [ "$size" -gt 0 ]
    then
        cylinders=$(echo "${size}/255/63/512" | bc)
        {
            echo ,9,0x0C,*
            echo ,,,-
        } | sudo sfdisk -D -H 255 -S 63 -C $cylinders $device

    else
        echo "can't retrieve size of ${device}"
        exit
    fi

    # this is a wrong assumption
    p1="${device}1"
    p2="${device}2"

    echo "formating boot partition..."
    sudo mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n "boot" $p1
    echo "formating rootfs partition..."
    sudo mke2fs -j -L "rootfs" $p2
}

echo -n "ready to nuke ${device}? y/n "
read confirm
if [ "$confirm" = "y" ]
then
    prepare-card
else
    echo "aborted"
fi

Preparing the Partitions

The hard work is already done, we only have to fetch tarballs, extract the u-boot tarball to the boot partition, then the root tarball to the root filesystem, and finally to generate an environment for u-boot to start, here’s a script to perform these steps :

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# s. rannou <mxs@sbrk.org>
#
# a script to install archlinux arm on a formatted sd card for IGEPv2

device=/dev/sdb

# get tarballs from archlinuxarm.org
function dl-archives {
    if ! [ -f IGEPv2-bootloader.tar.gz ]
    then
        wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/omap/IGEPv2-bootloader.tar.gz
    fi

    if ! [ -f ArchLinuxARM-omap-smp-latest.tar.gz ]
    then
        wget http://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-omap-smp-latest.tar.gz
    fi
}

# prepares u-boot on the boot partition
function install-uboot {
    sudo tar -xvf IGEPv2-bootloader.tar.gz -C /mnt/igep-boot
    sudo cp /mnt/igep-root/boot/uImage /mnt/igep-boot/
    sudo mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n "IGEP v2 boot script" -d boot.cfg boot.scr
    sudo mv boot.scr /mnt/igep-boot/
}

# prepares the root filesystem
function install-root {
    sudo tar -xvf ArchLinuxARM-omap-smp-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt/igep-root
}

echo -n "ready to nuke ${device}? y/n "
read confirm
if [ "$confirm" = "y" ]
then
    dl-archives
    sudo mkdir -p /mnt/igep-boot /mnt/igep-root
    sudo mount "${device}1" /mnt/igep-boot
    sudo mount "${device}2" /mnt/igep-root
    install-root
    install-uboot
    sudo umount /mnt/igep-boot
    sudo umount /mnt/igep-root
else
    echo "aborted"
fi

And here’s the boot.cfg file that is required to generate the boot.scr:

setenv bootargs 'console=ttyO2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw rootfstype=ext3 rootwait'
mmc init
fatload mmc 0 0x80300000 uImage
bootm 0x80300000
boot

That’s it, we are ready to boot.

First Boot

For the first boot I use a serial adapter with minicom, but you can also directly use the network as there’s an SSH automatically starting so if you have a DHCP, you know what to do.