3.9 KiB
WIP stuff to get started on the pinebook pro.
Using in your configuration
Clone this repository somwhere, and in your configuration.nix
{
imports = [
.../pinebook-pro/pinebook_pro.nix
];
}
That entry point will try to stay unopinionated, while maximizing the hardware compatibility.
Current state
A whole lot of untested.
You can look at the previous state to see that the basic stuff works. But I find listing everything as working is hard.
What's untested and not working will be listed here at some point. Maybe.
Known issues
rockchipdrm and efifb
This can be worked around by booting with the efifb=off kernel command-line.
This is already handled for you by this configuration. If using the generic UEFI AArch64 iso, you will need to add the option yourself to the command-line using GRUB.
EFI and poweroff
When booted using EFI, the system will not power off. It will stay seemingly
stuck with the LED and display turned off.
Power it off by holding the power button for a while (10-15 seconds).
Otherwise you might have a surprise and find the battery is flat!
A workaround exists, and is built in recent Tow-Boot (no prebuilt releases at this time).
Image build
NOTE: These images will be built without an Initial Boot Firmware.
SD image
$ nix-build -A sdImage
ISO image
$ nix-build -A isoImage
Note about cross-compilation
This will automatically detect the need for cross-compiling or not.
When cross-compiled, all caveats apply. Here this mainly means that the kernel will need to be re-compiled on the device on the first nixos-rebuild switch, while most other packages can be fetched from the cache.
For cross-compilation, you might have to provide a path to a known-good Nixpkgs checkout. (Left as an exercis to the reader.)
$ NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=/path/to/known/working/cross-compilation-friendly/nixpkgs
Initial Boot Firmware
NOTE: The previously available customized U-Boot from this repository are not available anymore.
Tow-Boot
I highly suggest installing Tow-Boot to the SPI Flash.
Having the firmware installed to SPI makes the device act basically like a normal computer. No need for weird incantations to setup the initial boot firmware.
Alternatively, starting from the Tow-Boot disk image on eMMC is easier to deal with and understand than having to deal with U-Boot manually.
Mainline U-Boot
Mainline U-Boot has full support for graphics since 2021.04. The current unstable relases of Nixpkgs are at 2021.04 at least.
$ nix-build -A pkgs.ubootPinebookPro
Note that the default U-Boot build does not do anything with LED on startup.
Keyboard firmware
WARNING: Some hardware batches for the Pinebook Pro ship with the wrong chip for the keyboard controller. While it will work with the firmware it ships with, it may brick while flashing the updated firmware. See this comment on the firmware repository.
It is unclear how to identify said hardware from a running system.
To determine which keyboard controller you have, you will need to disassemble the Pinebook Pro as per the Pine64 wiki, and make sure that the IC next to the U23 marking on the main board is an SH68F83.
$ nix-build -A pkgs.pinebookpro-keyboard-updater
$ sudo ./result/bin/updater step-1 <iso|ansi>
$ sudo poweroff
# ...
$ sudo ./result/bin/updater step-2 <iso|ansi>
$ sudo poweroff
# ...
$ sudo ./result/bin/updater flash-kb-revised <iso|ansi>
Note: poweroff must be used, reboot does not turn the hardware "off" enough.