After releasing a stable version of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 and A13 in February, Hans de Goede, working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, has recently announced “Fedora 19 ARM remix for Allwinner SOCs” on linux-sunxi community mailing list. This released based on Fedora 19 for ARM together with linux-sunxi kernel and u-boot, adds support for A10s and A20 based devices, and 38 boards and devices are now supported.
To give it a try, download the 665MB image:
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wget http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/contrib-images/hansg/Fedora-19-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz |
then write it to an SD card (8GB or greater):
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xzcat Fedora-19-a10-armhfp-r1.img.xz > /dev/[device] sync |
Where you have to replace [device] with your actual SD card device, e.g. sdc.Since u-boot is board/product specific, you’ll also have to update u-boot for your hardware. Remove the SD card, re-insert it, and run:<
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sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh |
to display a graphical menu (if dialog is installed on your Linux PC), or a list supported boards and products:
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Available boards: a10_mid_1gb A10 tablet sold under various names (whitelabel) a13_mid A13 tablet sold under various names (whitelabel) a10s-olinuxino-m A10s-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) a13-olinuxino A13-OLinuXino (Olimex) a13-olinuxinom A13-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) a20-olinuxino_micro A20-OLinuXino-MICRO (Olimex) auxtek-t003 Auxtek T003 hdmi tv stick auxtek-t004 Auxtek T004 hdmi tv stick ba10_tv_box BA10 TV Box coby_mid7042 Coby MID7042 tablet coby_mid8042 Coby MID8042 tablet coby_mid9742 Coby MID9742 tablet cubieboard_512 Cubieboard development board 512 MB RAM cubieboard Cubieboard development board 1024 MB RAM cubieboard2 Cubieboard 2 (A20) development board dns_m82 DNS AirTab M82 tablet EOMA68-A10 EOMA68 A10 CPU card gooseberry_a721 Gooseberry development board h6 H6 netbook hackberry Hackberry development board hyundai_a7hd Hyundai a7hd tablet inet97f-ii iNet-97F Rev.2 (and clones) tablet mele_a1000 Mele a1000/a2000 512 MB RAM mele_a1000g Mele a1000g/a2000g 1024 MB RAM mele_a3700 Mele a3700 (a1000g without sata) mini-x Mini-X 512 MB RAM mini-x-1gb Mini-X 1024 MB RAM mk802 mk802 (with female mini hdmi) 512 MB RAM mk802-1gb mk802 (with female mini hdmi) 1024 MB RAM mk802_a10s mk802 with A10s (s with a circle around it on the barcode label mk802ii mk802ii (with male normal hdmi) 1024 MB RAM pcduino pcDuino development board pov_protab2_ips9 Point of View ProTab 2 IPS 9" tablet pov_protab2_ips_3g Point of View ProTab 2 IPS tablet with 3g r7-tv-dongle r7 hdmi tv stick uhost_u1a UHost U1A hdmi tv stick wobo-i5 Wobo i5 TV Box xzpad700 XZPAD700 7" tablet |
Select you board in the graphical menu, or by running the command with your board, e.g.:
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sudo sh <uboot-part-mount>/select-board.sh cubieboard2 |
Finally umount the uboot and rootfs partitions:
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umount /run/media/hans/uboot umount /run/media/hans/rootfs |
The SD card is now ready. Insert it in your A1X/A20 device, connect the device to an HDMI or DVI monitor, and power it up to complete the installation. It will first resize the root partition to make full use of your SD card storage space, reboot automatically, and enter the first boot setup, where you’ll be able to configure networking, the timezone, create a root password, and create a normal user, before accessing Fedora 19.
As with Fedora 18, there’s no support for 2D (G2D engine), 3D (Mali 400 GPU), nor video decoding acceleration (CedarX VPU). AllWinner A20 support as been tested with Cubieboard2 development board, and the following are known to work:
- UARTs, I2C controllers
- MMC controllers
- EHCI and OHCI USB controllers (USB controllers 1 and 2, but controller 0 is an OTG controller and is not supported yet).
- Video Output – HDMI, VGA, LCD, Composite Out
- AXP PMIC including CPU voltage scaling
- RTC
- SOUND – Analog in/out, HDMI audio, S/PDIF out (SPDIF ported, but not tested)
- Ethernet controller (emac)
- SATA controller
You can also build the Fedora image yourself by using the scripts available at https://github.com/jwrdegoede/sunxi-fedora-scripts.git.
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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I think the sentence about graphics acceleration is unclear.
>As with Fedora 18, there’s support for 2D (G2D engine), 3D (Mali 400 GPU), nor video decoding acceleration (CedarX VPU).
I think it should be “there’s no support”.
Although on the A10/A10s/A13 ” if you add the necessary blobs you might get these to work “
@mj
Yes, correct “no support”. I’ve updated the post.
Sorry, I just don’t get it.
No GPU support; only limited support from the SOC manufacturer.
You can’t source the SOC itself in small quantities. The “development boards” aren’t really suited for “product” use and have questionable availability and longevity.
So remind me again — why exactly am I putting lots of time and money into developing for this SOC?
@JQPABC123
The TI CPUs are available for more than 2x the price.
Olimex are selling the Allwinner chips in small quantities and released their board design files. This would make low-rate production an option.
@JQPABC123
Are you serious about your question? I see posts like this from you not a first time, could you please stop trolling around this place? If you dont get it – it is your problem.
1. GPU is supported, it is Mali-400 and it works with both ARM’s X.org driver and ssvb’s xf86-video-sunxifb 2D acceleration driver with XVideo support – http://linux-sunxi.org/Binary_drivers You can get 300fps of glmark2-es2 on 800×480 screen using sunxifb.
2. VPU is supported in VLC command line player – http://linux-sunxi.org/VLC You can decode various formats http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarXVideoRenderingChart There’s also a big work going on with CedarX reversing – lots of stuff already figured out – there is a real hope for real API for video acceleration. While it goes, you can either go with cvlc or use any player with XVideo support and run decoding on CPU, it will work for lightweight stuff.
3. SoC itself can be bought from Olimex https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/IC/ in small quantities and from Chinese sources in big ones.
4. No one demands you to use this SoC family, seriously. You can try find another one with open kernel, live wiki and no NDA’s attached. Also if you are x86 fanboy – I will remind you that Aero on Windows 7 goes like 5fps on Intel Atom D2800, thanks to PowerVR, just sayin’.
You can buy Axx from Olimex in qt of one
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Components/IC/
Olimex just posted their opinion about longevity of AllWinner SoCs, and AllWinner F20 are said to still be available after 6 years.
http://olimex.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/how-long-olinuxino-boards-with-allwinner-socs-will-be-available/
If you have requirements for long term support (10 / 15 years), it clear I would not take the risk to go for AllWinner, but rather go with a company like Freescale that explicitly commit to long term availability. But if your product will just sell for a few years, AllWinner should be just fine.
I understand CedarX “works” (I posted about that), but there are artifacts during video playback, and that’s the reason why XBMC dropped support for AllWinner in Linux.
Hi,
i have 8 Gb Sdcard, but i can’t dd image to card by doing xcat image > /dev/sdc
it says out of space 🙁 whats should i do ?
@Atoms
That’s because your 8GB SD card is slightly smaller than the 8GB image.
I’ve written a small script to handle this case last year. http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/05/12/makesd-script-to-write-image-to-sd-card-for-mele-a1000-allwinner-a10-devices/
I’m not sure if it can still work with newer images.
Another method is to use a combination of e2fsck and resize2fs to make sure the root partition will mount.
Hi, what is the default root passwd of this image? I wrote this image to my 8GB SDcard, booted succesfully. I turn on my brand new LG 42LA640 LED TV through HDMI, set input, and then power on my Olinuxino-A20 board… but nothing on screen.. HDMI is dedected by TV… I tried all 3 inputs of the TV, tried 3 different HDMI cable… no luck..
I am trying to login through tty ( RS232 ), so could you tell me its default username & passwd ?
@sertac
Try “fedora” as the root password.
hi
i have followed this tutorial and prepared SD card as you have specified ( i used it for a20-olinuxino_micro), but after running script
./select-board.sh a20-olinuxino_micro i got the message writing done and when i looked for uboot image i didn’t found anything. then i put the card into a20-olinuxino_micro it didn’t displayed anything on the screen , what might be the reason?? and how can i solve it ??