[fedora-arm] Announcing Fedora 18 Beta for Allwinner A10 based devices

Tue Jan 15 16:44:14 UTC 2013

Hi Hans,

Absolutely fab! Thanks for all your work on this.

Peter

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Hans de Goede <hdegoede at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm very happy to announce the availability of Fedora 18 Beta for
> Allwinner A10 based devices. This release is based on the official
> Fedora 18 beta for ARM images.
>
> You can download it here:
> http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/contrib-images/hansg
>
> It is important to read the README, the image standard comes without
> u-boot pre-loaded since u-boot is board specific. The image includes
> a user-friendly simple script to install the right u-boot for
> your board, but if you simply xzcat the image to an sdcard, and then
> boot your device with the sdcard, things will *not* work.
>
> Known Issues:
> * Composite video out does not work
> Selecting composite video out (see README) causes the system to hang
> on boot. Investigation of this is pending.
>
> See the README for a list of currently supported boards.
>
> Enjoy,
>
> Hans
>
>
> And to make sure everyone reads the README, let me print it here
> in full:
>
> Fedora 18 ARM for Allwinner A10 devices README
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> Quickstart guide
> ----------------
>
> 1) Insert an sdcard, note any data on the card will be destroyed!
> 2) Make sure the card is not mounted, run "mount" and if the card shows
>    up in the output umount its partitions
> 3) Write the img file to the card, ie as root do:
>    xzcat Fedora-18-Beta-a10-armhfp.img > /dev/mmcblk0
>    sync
> 4) The card is not yet ready for use! Since the A10 u-boot is board
>    specific, the image comes without any uboot install, follow the next
>    steps to install the right u-boot for your board
> 5) Remove the card, and re-insert it. The uboot partition should get
>    automatically mounted, if not mount it manually,
> 6) As root (or through sudo) run:
>    sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh
>    Note the "sh " in front is necessary because the uboot vfat partition
>    often gets auto-mounted noexec. ie:
>    sudo sh /run/media/hans/uboot/select-board.sh
>
>    If you've dialog installed the select-board.sh script will prompt for
>    your board. If you don't have dialog installed, it will print the list
>    of supported boards. Lookup your board and re-run the script with the
>    shortname for your board as argument, ie:
>    sudo sh /run/media/hans/uboot/select-board.sh mk802
> 7) umount the uboot and rootfs partitions, ie:
>    umount /run/media/hans/uboot
>    umount /run/media/hans/rootfs
> 8) Your sdcard is now ready for use
> 9) *Before* powering up your A10 device connect it to an hdmi or dvi monitor
> 10) When first booting from the sdcard inserted Fedora will automatically
>    reboot once, this is part of the process to resize the root partition to
>    fill the entire sdcard and is normal behavior.
> 11) After the automatic reboot Fedora will start with the firstboot wizard:
>    11a) Configure a user here
>    11b) Most A10 devices do not come with a battery backed rtc, so you will
>         want to enable ntp. Simply click ok in the ntp dialog. Now firstboot
>         will try to start ntp. Since most devices have only wireless, and
>         that is not configured yet at this time, click on cancel when it
>         tries to start ntp. If it then asks if you want to re-do your ntp
>         configuration choose no.
> 12) Log in as the just created user
> 13) If you need to configure wireless click on the network icon in the
>     top right corner (next to the clock) and select the wireless network
>     you want to connect to
> 14) Enjoy Fedora on your A10 device
>
>
> Supported Devices:
> ------------------
>
> Fedora 18 ARM for Allwinner A10 has been tested with the following devices:
> * Gooseberry development board
> * Mele a1000g/a2000g 1024 MB RAM
> * Mini-X 1024 MB RAM
> * mk802 (with female mini hdmi) 512 MB RAM
> * mk802ii (with male normal hdmi) 1024 MB RAM
>
> Fedora 18 ARM should also work on the following devices:
> * Cubieboard development board 512 MB RAM
> * Cubieboard development board 1024 MB RAM
> * H6 netbook
> * Hackberry development board
> * Hyundai a7hd tablet
> * Mele a1000/a2000 512 MB RAM
> * Mini-X 512 MB RAM
>
>
> Configuring the display output
> ------------------------------
>
> Multiple video outputs at the same time are not supported. By default
> hdmi output with EDID is used for all devices, except for tablets/netbooks
> where the default output is the lcd.
>
> The default hdmi output with EDID will get the native resolution of your
> TV / monitor and use that. Note that in order for this to work your TV /
> monitor must be connected *and turned on*, before booting your device.
>
> The output resolution can be configured with the disp.screen0_output_mode
> kernel cmdline value, which can be found in the extrargs part of uEnv.txt in
> the uboot partition. The default uEnv.txt contains the following value:
> disp.screen0_output_mode=EDID:1280x720p60
>
> This means try to use EDID and if no valid EDID info is found fallback to
> 1280x720p60.
>
> The used output can be changed by adding disp.screen0_output_type=X to the
> extraargs in uEnv.txt. With X being one of: 0:none; 1:lcd; 2:tv; 3:hdmi;
> 4:vga
>
> Some per display type notes:
> -lcd outputs: Hardcoded to the native mode, disp.screen0_output_mode is
> ignored
> -tv: Does not support EDID, "EDID:" must be removed from the
>  disp.screen0_output_mode value otherwise it will be ignored, example usage:
>  disp.screen0_output_type=2 disp.screen0_output_mode=720x480i50
> -hdmi: To override the EDID detected mode, drop the "EDID:" from the
>  disp.screen0_output_mode value and set it to the desired mode, ie:
>  disp.screen0_output_type=3 disp.screen0_output_mode=1360x768p60
> -vga: Does not support EDID, "EDID:" must be removed from the
>  disp.screen0_output_mode value otherwise it will be ignored. interlaced
>  progressive and refreshrate settings specified are ignored, each resolution
>  has hardcoded values for these. Example usage:
>  disp.screen0_output_type=4 disp.screen0_output_mode=1024x768
>
>
> USB controller caveats
> ----------------------
> The OTG USB controller in host mode only supports a limited number of
> devices, plugging in a hub + mouse + keyboard typically will make either
> the mouse or keyboard not work. This is a hardware limitation which we
> will likely not be able to work around.
>
> On tv-sticks and top-set boxes, simply avoid the otg connector, instead
> use a hub in a regular host usb connector. Note on the mini-x the otg / host
> marking is not always correct. If things don't work try using the OTG
> connector instead!
>
> On tablets and the gooseberry unfortunately only the otg connector is
> available. One solution there is using a single usb-device which is
> both a keyboard and a mouse at the same time. IE the receiver for logitech
> wireless desktop sets.
>
>
> Supported hardware components / features:
> -----------------------------------------
>
> Fedora 18 ARM for Allwinner A10 supports the following components:
> * CPU + PMU + RAM
> * Serial ports
> * MMC cards
> * Internal NAND storage
> * Framebuffer on lcd / vga / hdmi / composite video
> * Sound both analog out and over hdmi
> * OTG USB controller
> * Both standard USB host controllers
> * Wifi
> * Wired Ethernet
> * SATA
> * IR (untested at this time)
>
>
> Unsupported hardware components:
> --------------------------------
>
> The following components require various proprietary blobs to be used, and
> as such are not supported in the Fedora images. The kernel drivers for them
> are present (usually as modules), so if you add the necessary blobs you
> might get these to work:
> * Mali 400 GPU
> * Cedar hardware video & audio decoding and encoding engine
> * G2D 2d engine
>
>
> Differences from stock Fedora
> -----------------------------
> * Since the A10 is not a very powerful soc some services which are enabled
> by
>   default on Fedora are disabled in the image, see build-image.sh for a
> list.
> * No plymouth: we log to a serial console for debugging so no pretty splash.
>   Also we don't use an initrd, so removing the console=ttyS0,115200 from
>   the extraargs in uEnv.txt will give plymouth, but so late it hardly
> matters.
>
>
> Future plans / todo:
> --------------------
> * Currently 192MiB of the A10's RAM is reserved, leaving only 320MiB for
> Linux
>   use on 512MiB RAM systems. This is mostly caused by memory reserved for
> use
>   by hardware listed under the "Unsupported hardware components" paragraph.
>   Since we're not using those blocks anyways the plan is to give this RAM
> back
>   to Linux by adding kernel cmdline options to reserve the RAM, and then:
>   1) On Fedora by default set all the reserved sizes to 0 on the cmdline
>   2) The kernel modules for these hw-blocks will check the reserved size and
>      if it is 0 refuse to load
>   3) Users who want to use these hw-blocks already need to manually
> configure
>      the necessary blobs, they will now also need to adjust the kernel
> cmdline
> * Currently both the analog and hdmi audio outputs of the A10 are both
>   always registered. This means that the user must always manually pick the
>   right soundcard for his config. The plan is to instead only register the
>   analog out on boards which actually have an analog out connecter, and only
>   register the hdmi audio card when an hdmi-audio capable monitor is
> detected
>
>
> Rebuilding the Fedora 18 ARM for Allwinner A10 disk image
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> Building the Fedora 18 ARM for Allwinner A10 disk image consists of 2 steps
> 1) Building a uboot.tar.gz and rootfs.tar.gz "overlays", this is done
>    bu the build-boot-root-sh script
> 2) Combining uboot.tar.gz and rootfs.tar.gz with an official Fedora 18
>    ARM panda image. The a10 image you downloaded is named the same as the
> panda
>    image used as base with panda replaced by a10, so to get the panda image
>    name replace a10 with panda again :) This combining is done by the
>    build-image.sh script
>
> These scripts are hosted here:
> https://github.com/jwrdegoede/sunxi-fedora-scripts.git
>
> A copy of the exact versions of these scripts used to build this Fedora A10
> image can be found in the scripts directory of the uboot partition, the
> kernel config used during the build can be found here too.
>
> If you want to exactly reproduce this image it is important to use the
> scripts from the scripts dir of the uboot partition, as the scripts contain
> GIT tags used during the build to checkout the exact versions to build.
>
> The pre-conditions these scripts expect to be met, and the exact usage of
> them is documented in comments in the top of each script.
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