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ARM – New Raspberry Pi 2 – ARMv7 at Last..

Adventures With Linux ™ Posted on by

For those who have a new Raspberry Pi 2 on order – as I have – the kernel source is now available, at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tree/rpi-3.18.y-rebase.

To get the correct config, start with # make bcm2709_defconfig

For me, one of the additional benefits is that it is ARMv7, which should support the standard up-to-date Fedora 21 distro, instead of the older ARMv6 ‘Pidora’..

I will post more details after the hardware arrives…

Robert Gadsdon.   February 2, 2015.

Comments

ARM – New Raspberry Pi 2 – ARMv7 at Last.. — 19 Comments

    • My Pi 2 hasn’t arrived yet, and probably won’t for the next week or so.. No firm delivery date (to USA) yet..

      As the Pi2 is ARMv7, then the standard Fedora 21 armv7hl distro should install OK – same as my existing CuBox-4 Pro and Odroid U3..
      I expect the boot config will be same as the original Pi..

      RG.

      Reply ↓

      • I tried to dd the fedora arm image onto my pi card however it is having troubles booting it.

        I am thinking it’s having issues reading the boot partition. I am still playing around with it and hopefully i find something that will get the system to boot.

        I will check back and see if you have any better luck getting Fedora to run on the Pi2.

        Reply ↓

        • My Pi 2 hasn’t arrived yet, and probably won’t for the next week or so.. No firm delivery date (to USA) yet.. Very frustrating!

          RG.

          Reply ↓

  3. Okay i got this working on my pi2. I am in the US RG and ordered mine from element14. Anyway this is my “hack” on getting Fedora Arm on my pie. I hope you don’t mind me posting this here.

    1. i copied the http://mirror.pnl.gov/fedora/linux/releases/21/Images/armhfp/Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5-sda.raw.xz image and wrote it to the drive.
    2. I removed the ext4 boot partition and made it a vfat fat32 marking it bootable.
    3. I forked the https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware git repo and copied the boot files into the new vfat boot partition.
    4. I put a file cmdline.txt in the boot partition with the rest of the files with the following content.
    dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
    make sure you change the root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 to your root partition. You will get a boot error if you don’t. I forgot what the error was.
    5. i also threw in the config.txt.
    #uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
    arm_freq=700

    # NOOBS Auto-generated Settings:
    hdmi_force_hotplug=1
    config_hdmi_boost=4
    overscan_left=24
    overscan_right=24
    overscan_top=16
    overscan_bottom=16
    disable_overscan=0
    core_freq=250
    sdram_freq=400
    over_voltage=0
    6. Copied the modules from the git firmware directory and put them in the lib/modules directory. That’s under root partition.
    7. Edit the etc/fstab file and change the /boot to vfat and also update the uuid. The vfat id is not a true uuid it’s shorter.
    8. …..
    9. PROFIT!!!

    I am now going to build my enlightenment packages so i can have my familiar desktop. I had built them for the Pi B+ and it was kinda slow. I do notice with this already that it appears to be allot faster.

    I will put more details on my website. And also a vanilla image without me going into the setup. That might help other people. What do you think?

    Reply ↓

    • Thanks! Good info.. I ordered mine from the Element14/Newark website just after it was announced, but had to ‘retry’ several times as traffic was so high… Rather like when the very first Pi was released in the UK, all those years ago…
      I’ve just received shipping notice for mine, so hope to get it in a few days time..
      Enlightenment – now that is a blast from the past… I remember using that from the days before Gnome! Just FYI, I have been using KDE4 on my multi-CPU ARM7 systems, and it actually runs quite well, if you turn off the ‘desktop effects’..

      RG

      Reply ↓

    • Thanks, Edward – that indeed does work well! Minimal install works very well, and I have even managed to get the KDE spin working, with only a couple of problems. I could not get the XFCE spin to start a GUI.

      (1) With KDE, it seems that after all is configured, updated, and booted, sddm-greeter sits and uses about 300% of CPU, which makes everything very sluggish until you log in at the console. After that it runs acceptably fast.

      (2) I configured everything to run off a 2.5 inch hard drive. It appears that the Pi2 is not willing to supply adequate power to an external hard drive, though, and I had to add another power supply for it. This is even though I connected the Pi2 to a 3 amp 5V supply. For now, I connected the hard drive’s USB ‘Y’ cable to an iPad charger. It’s disappointing that it doesn’t seem possible to run everything off the one power supply.

      Reply ↓

  4. Great stuff Edward, it works!
    Thanks for that 🙂

    I left the ‘arm_freq=700’ commented out because I think the Pi 2 is 900MHz.

    Reply ↓

  5. Great job Edward! Will be trying it out today. Have you thought about posting an SD card image (via torrent would be advisable as distros can easily be 1 GB or more) to make it easier for newbies?

    David, the reason you can’t run high-current devices like a hard drive directly through a Pi is because the power regulator and related components are only sufficient to support the Pi board and a few USB peripherals such as a simple keyboard, mouse, etc., in order to keep the cost below the $35 target price for the Model B/B+/2-B, $25 price for the Model A, and $20 price for the Model A+.

    So, you can either run high-current devices such as a hard disk drive via its own power supply or via a sufficiently-powered USB hub. Note that, technically, USB ports are only required by the USB standard to supply 500 milliamps of current, although many computers have USB ports that provide 1 amp or even more. You have to make sure you’re using appropriately gauged cable wires when this much current is being supplied to such a USB device. Some low-cost cables have minimally-gauged wires and can drop enough voltage below the 4.75 volt limit specified in the USB standard that devices (including the Pi boards) can operate erratically, if not at all.

    Reply ↓

    • Joe,

      I was thinking of putting up an image, however i have read on the Fedora ARM mailing list that someone already is working on the Fedora Spins for Pi B2. They have also packaged the kernel in rpm and put some needed excludes. The person Clive Messer asked for the url not to be shared at this time. The server it is on doesn’t have the resources to handle people pulling the image.

      Other news is that i did get my Enlightenment packages built and a working desktop. I also did Entrance and Exquisite. I still have not gotten Exquisite to run during boot. I will work on that more this week. The desktop is not very stable. I don’t think i reserved enough memory for video. I will keep playing with it to see what i can do.

      Reply ↓

  6. One minor problem I noticed is that after getting Fedora up and running you must resize the root filesystem to expand it before you run “yum update” because there is insufficient free space in the Fedora (minimal) image; your yum job will get about halfway and run out of space. On my first attempt this had the side effect of losing all configuration for eth0, so no more network access. It was faster at that point to re-write the root fs from the original Fedora image, than try to figure out what had been lost.

    An aside concerning power: Perhaps my micro USB cable is too long and/or not beefy enough; the old model Pi B+ will run the same 2.5 inch hard drive from its USB port which is why I was surprised the Pi2 wouldn’t. Anyway, all works well with a second 5V source 🙂

    Reply ↓

    • For easy partition resizing, I use gparted when the MicroSD card is mounted on my ‘main’ system – before transferring it to the Pi..

      In my experience, the Pi’s have always had ‘issues’ with the USB connector, but I would always run an external hard drive with its own power supply, in any case..

      RG.

      Reply ↓

  7. Hello Edward

    Great set of instructions, Thank Yoo

    I have one question, how do I find the correct id for the disk as noted in your text

    4. I put a file cmdline.txt in the boot partition with the rest of the files with the following content.
    dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
    make sure you change the root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 to your root partition. You will get a boot error if you don’t. I forgot what the error was.

    Thanks in advance for your help
    Colin

    Reply ↓

  8. @Colin

    Sorry i got your message late last night as i was going to bed.

    I used gparted to get the name… you can also run sudo fdisk -l or lsblk. You will want your root partition.

    Also try this

    lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,uuid

    Let me know if you need more assistance.

    Reply ↓

  9. Thanks Edward

    All done now and working happily
    my problem wasnt finding the name as such, I had boot problems and was unable to login as the root fs name was wrong. finally sorted the problem

    Thanks
    Colin

    Reply ↓

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