NixOS on ARM/NanoPC-T4
| NanoPC-T4 | |
|---|---|
| |
| Manufacturer | FriendlyElec |
| Architecture | AArch64 |
| Bootloader | u-boot with ARM trusted boot and Rockchip Miniloader |
| Boot order | official: eMMC |
| Maintainer | tmountain |
The NanoPC-T4 is a single board computer built around the Rockchip RK3399 SoC.
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
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