NixOS on ARM/NanoPC-T4
The NanoPC-T4 is a single board computer built around the Rockchip RK3399 SoC.
| NanoPC-T4 | |
|---|---|
| |
| Manufacturer | FriendlyElec |
| Architecture | AArch64 |
| Bootloader | u-boot with ARM trusted boot and Rockchip Miniloader |
| Boot order | official: eMMC |
| Maintainer | tmountain |
Status
The board boots NixOS from eMMC and will also load NixOS via its integrated microSD reader.
The official documentation, which is comprehensive, can be found on the FriendlyElec wiki.
U-Boot for this board is not entirely open, incorporating a binary blob for the tertiary program loader (TPL). Compilation instructions are featured in section 15.7 of the FriendlyElec wiki, and a build target is also provided in upstream u-boot (nanopc-t4-rk3399_defconfig).
Pre-built u-boot images are available here.
Board Specific Installation Notes
Installation onto eMMC
The NanoPC-T4 reserves space for u-boot at the beginning of its eMMC and/or microSD. As a result, successful image installation relies upon a custom partitioning scheme.
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=1M count=32
# fdisk /dev/mmcblk2
Command (m for help): g
Created a new GPT disklabel (GUID: 2E750097-829F-614C-AD9E-271DA3413E3E).
Command (m for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (2048-30535646, default 2048): 32768
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (32768-30535646, default 30535646):
Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux filesystem' and of size 14.6 GiB.
Command (m for help): w
# Make the filesystem and set the disk label (crucially important)
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk2p1
# tune2fs -L NIXOS_SD /dev/mmcblk2p1
After partitioning, you can write the u-boot images as follows.
# dd if=idbloader.bin of=/dev/mmcblk2 seek=64 conv=notrunc
# dd if=uboot.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 seek=16384 conv=notrunc
# dd if=trust.bin of=/dev/mmcblk2 seek=24576 conv=notrunc
boot and rootfs
The latest linux kernel is working with this board. Instead of building the image yourself you can fetch the latest sd-image from hydra and dd the created images onto the separate partitions. You can find all the successful builds in hydra @ nixos:release-18.09-aarch64:nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux
# get the latest link directly from hydra
wget https://hydra.nixos.org/build/89033499/download/1/nixos-sd-image-18.09.2227.ea0820818a7-aarch64-linux.img -O sd.img
udisksctl loop-setup -f sd.img -r
# copy the root filesystem to the partition you created earlier
# mkdir eemc imgroot
# mount /dev/mmcblk2p1 emmc
# mount /dev/loop0p2 imgroot
# cd imgroot
# tar cf - . | (cd ../emmc && tar xvf -)
# cd .. && umount eemc imgroot