NixOS on RISCV/VisionFive 2

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VisionFive 2
Manufacturer	StarFive
Architecture	RISC-V
Bootloader	Custom or UEFI
Boot order	Configurable; SD, USB, Netboot
Maintainer	onny
VisionFive 2
SoC	JH7110

The VisionFive 2 is a single board computer (SBC) that uses a RISC-V processor with an integrated GPU. It supports Linux operating system and various multimedia features, such as 4K video decoding and OpenGL ES 3.212.

Building a SD-card image

This example assumes you have the latest revision of the board (v1.3) with 8GB memory. For other configurations please consult the nixos-hardware documentation on this board. First create this Flake file

flake.nix

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-23.11";
  inputs.nixos-hardware.url = "github:nixos/nixos-hardware";

  # Some dependencies of this flake are not yet available on non linux systems
  inputs.systems.url = "github:nix-systems/x86_64-linux";
  inputs.flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
  inputs.flake-utils.inputs.systems.follows = "systems";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, nixos-hardware, flake-utils, ... }:
    flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
      rec {
        packages.default = packages.sd-image;
        packages.sd-image = (import "${nixpkgs}/nixos" {
          configuration =
            { config, ... }: {
              imports = [
                "${nixos-hardware}/starfive/visionfive/v2/sd-image-installer.nix"
              ];

              # If you want to use ssh set a password
              users.users.nixos.password = "test123";
              # OR add your public ssh key
              # users.users.nixos.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-rsa ..." ];

              # AND configure networking
              networking.interfaces.end0.useDHCP = true;
              networking.interfaces.end1.useDHCP = true;

              # Additional configuration goes here

              hardware.deviceTree.overlays = [{
                name = "8GB-patch";
                dtsFile = "${nixos-hardware}/starfive/visionfive/v2/8gb-patch.dts";
              }];

              sdImage.compressImage = false;

              nixpkgs.crossSystem = {
                config = "riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu";
                system = "riscv64-linux";
              };

              system.stateVersion = "23.11";
            };
          inherit system;
        }).config.system.build.sdImage;
      });
}

Run following command to build the SD-card image

nix build .#

After successfull build, flash the resulting file in the directory results/sd-image to the target device, in this example the SD-card (/dev/mmcblk*). Note that everything on the target device gets erased.

dd if=result/sd-image/nixos-sd-image-23.11pre-git-riscv64-linux-starfive-visionfive2.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress

Usage

First enable booting from SD-card by enabling jumper 1 and 2

Move jumpers to the right away from the numbers to enable SD-card booting

For UART access, wire GND (black), RX (blue) and TX (purple) to your adapter

Update board firmware

sudo visionfive2-firmware-update-flash

Bootstrap NixOS system configuration at /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

nixos-generate-config