A few months ago, Hans de Goede, currently working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, started to show up on linux-sunxi mailing list, and sent a lot of kernel patches for linux-sunxi kernel. Last week-end, he announced “Fedora 18 Final for Allwinner A10 and A13 based devices” on linux-sunxi community mailing list.
To install it, first download the image:
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wget http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/contrib-images/hansg/Fedora-18-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz |
And write it to an SD card (all data will be wiped out):
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xzcat Fedora-18-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz > /dev/mmcblk0 |
You may have to replace “/dev/mmcblk0” by your own SD card device, e.g. “/dev/sdc”.
AllWinner based devices can share the same kernel, but u-boot is board/products specific, so you’ll have to install u-boot for your board. First remove the SD card, re-insert it in order to automatically mount the FAT partition, and run:
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sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh |
This will show the list of supported boards and products. Then run the command again for your device. For example:
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sudo sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh mk802 |
Finally umount the uboot and rootfs partitions. Your Fedora 18 distribution is now ready.
Insert the SD card in your device, connect your device to an HDMI monitor (except for tablets/netbooks), and power it up. It will reboot once as it will automatically resize the rootfs partition to fully utilize your SD card), and it will enter a first boot menu where you’ll be able to create users, and setup Wi-Fi.
Fedora 18 for AllWinner A1X supports most peripherals, but there’s currently no support for Mali 400 GPU, the VPU, and G2D 2D engine.
Fedora 18 should work with the following boards and products:
- Cubieboard development board
- Gooseberry development board
- Hackberry development board
- Mele a1000, a2000, a1000g and a2000g
- Mini-X
- mk802 (several models)
- mk802ii (with male normal hdmi) 1024 MB RAM
- UHost U1A HDMI TV Dongle
- Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO and A13-OLinuXino
- AllWinner A10 tablets such as Coby MID7042, MID8042 and Coby MID9742 tablets, Point of View ProTab 2 tablet,
- AllWinner A13 tablets
- H6 netbook
- BA10 TV Box
This version of Fedora 18 is optimized for AllWinner A1x SoCs. So even though you could always install the stock Fedora 18 armhf on your device, this version should perform better, as it does not run all services started in the stock version, and there’s no plymouth, nor initrd.
You can also rebuild the image yourself by using sunxi-fedora-scripts.
More details are available in the README.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Too bad can not get my only Allwinner A10-based tablet (Ampe A10 Deluxe) boot off the microSD card with that image, assumed the “Whitelabel A10 tablet sold under various names” would be the closest choice for the uboot… both internal LCD and the HDMI stays off and nothing seems to happen.
Maybe that tablet needs some sort of booting method that differs from rest of the A10-based systems?
@anon
Or you may have to create your own u-boot and get script.bin for your tablet.
I am wondering what it takes to get this to run on a GK802. Theorically, all pieces are there; it just needs to be put together…
Will it work on A10S based boards ?
@S
You should just be able to run it by replacing Ubuntu rootfs with Fedora rootfs.
@S
http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/02/13/developer-community-for-freescale-i-mx6-hdmi-dongles/
https://github.com/rzk/linux-imx/commits/imx_3.0.35_1.1.0-hdmidongle
we already working on it, main problem right now is USB support, but we will sort it out.
I’ve installed this on a Mele A2000 and it works great, thank you.
Only trouble is, I don’t appear to have created an admin user or set a root password – Any ideas on how to fix this?
There doesn’t appear to be any way to drop into ‘rescue mode’. I have a RS-232 console port on my device (a handy little hack) so I might be able to get to a U-Boot prompt, but what next from there?
I should be able to insert the SD card into another computer (Fedora 17) and mount the file systems if that helps.
@Graeme Russ
I haven’t tried this image, does sudo work?
@cnxsoft
sudo did not work as the created user was not a member of the ‘wheel’ group
I managed to recover by dropping into a U-Boot prompt and performing the following actions:
#setenv extraargs init=/bin/sh
#run setargs
#run boot_mmc
That drops you into a root prompt on the serial console port. You can then use passwd and usermod to set the root password or add the default user to the wheel group.
But here is where things get tricky – any modifications to /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/gshadow or /etc/groups will trash the SELinux contexts. So setting the root password or changing a user to be a member of the ‘wheel’ group will cause problems. (D-Bus will not be able to resolve the ‘root’ user and boot-up will fail spectacularly).
You will need to edit /etc/selinux/config and disable SELinux before you reboot. After reboot, you will need to use chcon to reapply the security contexts on and file modified while in single user mode (including /etc/selinux/config), re-enable SELinux and reboot. Reboot will take a while as it rebuilds the security contexts of the file system.
There is probably a better way of doing all this, but that’s basically what I did. Very happy to get it all working.
Next task is to clear out the on-board NAND and move the root filesystem – I’m running of a 4GB SD card and the board has 4GB of NAND Flash, so I should be good. Any ideas on how to best go about doing this?
@Graeme Russ
I don’t know how to install it on the flash, but there are instructions somewhere. If you can’t find them, you may want to ask on linux-sunxi mailing list.
@Graeme Russ
Google for “Pimp my mele”.
I think I’ll have to leave it on SD as after installing a few packages, I’m coming close to the 4GB ceiling.
I’d really like to get accelerated graphics working, but this kernel does not appear to have any Mali modules at all, and the only instructions I’ve seen to load the binary blob seems to need it. Any ideas?
The password is “fedora” as stated here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cubie_Board
@äxl
I then also had no problem adding the group “sudo”, adding the user to group sudo and include everything with visudo. I didn’t have to change SELinux or such poppycock.
I’ve installed on my Coby Kyros 7032. I was able to boot using a13_mid. Touchscreen is not working. Any ideas how to install TS driver?
any body can post a derict DOWNLOAD link of fedora..thanks in advance…