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= Install Using Debian Installer = = Introduction =

Support for boards using the Allwinner "sunxi" (sun4i, sun5i, sun6i, sun7i, sun8i, sun50i) family of processors, e.g. A10, A13, A31/A31s, A20, A23/A33, A64, etc.

= Install Using Debian-Installer =
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The following should work out of the box:

 * Cubietruck

Other platforms are still usable but may require more manual intervention to install.

== Installing to SATA ==

Support for installing to a SATA devices from the network is currently available in the Debian Installer [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/|daily builds]].

''NOTE'': These instructions assume the use of a TFTP server, which should already be installed. However the installer images can also be loaded via other means, e.g. from MMC.

=== U-boot Bootloader ===

''TBD'': This needs a u-boot with AHCI support (WIP, upstream).

=== Prepare the TFTP Server ===
Debian-installer should work out of the box on all the following sunxi-based systems, but as the developers do not have access to all of them, the installer has only been tested on particular systems. If you have used the installer on one of the untested systems, please submit an installation-report to the Debian project (cf. the [[http://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.armhf/ch05s04.html#submit-bug|Submitting Installation Reports]] chapter in the Debian installation-guide).

=== Stable ===

Hardware systems tested and confirmed working in Buster or older.

||'''System'''||'''Device Tree Blob'''||'''Notes'''||
||Cubietech Cubieboard||`sun4i-a10-cubieboard.dtb`||Installation Reports: [[https://bugs.debian.org/770904|[1]]], [[https://bugs.debian.org/775748|[2]]]||
||Cubietech Cubieboard2||`sun7i-a20-cubieboard2.dtb`||
||Cubietech Cubietruck (Cubieboard3)||`sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb`||
||!LeMaker Banana Pi || `sun7i-a20-bananapi.dtb`||
||!LeMaker Banana Pro || `sun7i-a20-bananapro.dtb`|| [[https://bugs.debian.org/780493|Installation Report]] ||
||Olimex A10-OLinuXino-LIME||`sun4i-a10-olinuxino-lime.dtb`||
||Olimex A10s-Olinuxino Micro||`sun5i-a10s-olinuxino-micro.dtb`||[[https://bugs.debian.org/806240|Installation Report]]||
||Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME||`sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime.dtb`|| [[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=777334|Installation Report]]||
||Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2||`sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime2.dtb`|| [[https://bugs.debian.org/780164|Installation Report]]||
||Olimex A20-Olinuxino Micro||`sun7i-a20-olinuxino-micro.dtb`||[[https://bugs.debian.org/774176|Installation Report]]||
||Olimex A20-SOM-EVB||`sun7i-a20-olimex-som-evb.dtb`||[[https://bugs.debian.org/815831|Installation Report]] (gigabit ethernet issues)||
||Olimex Teres-I||`sun50i-a64-teres-i.dtb`|| [[InstallingDebianOn/Olimex/Teres-I|Wiki page]]||
||Pine64 PINE A64||`sun50i-a64-pine64.dtb`|| [[InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/PINEA64|Wiki page]]||
||Pine64 PINE A64+||`sun50i-a64-pine64-plus.dtb`|| [[InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/PINEA64|Wiki page]]||

=== Stable untested ===

Hardware systems for which the installer has support code in Buster or older,
but on which installation has not been tested yet.

||'''System'''||'''Device Tree Blob'''||
||CHIP||`sun5i-r8-chip.dtb`||
||Cubietech Cubieboard4||`sun9i-a80-cubieboard4.dtb`||
||Cubietech Cubietruck Plus (Cubieboard5)||`sun8i-a83t-cubietruck-plus.dtb`||
||Lamobo R1||`sun7i-a20-lamobo-r1.dtb`||
||!LinkSprite pcDuino||`sun4i-a10-pcduino.dtb`||
||!LinkSprite pcDuino3||`sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dtb`||
||Mini-X||`sun4i-a10-mini-xplus.dtb`||
||Nano Pi Neo||`sun8i-h3-nanopi-neo.dtb`||
||Nano Pi Neo2||`sun50i-h5-nanopi-neo2.dtb`||
||Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-eMMC||`sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime2-emmc.dtb`||
||Olimex A64-OLinuXino||`sun50i-a64-olinuxino.dtb`||
||Orange Pi Plus||`sun8i-h3-orangepi-plus.dtb`||
||Orange Pi Zero||`sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-zero.dtb`||
||Orange Pi Zero Plus2||`sun50i-h5-orangepi-zero-plus2.dtb`||
||Pine64 PINE A64-LTS||`sun50i-a64-pine64-lts.dtb`||
||Pine64 Pinebook||`sun50i-a64-pinebook.dtb`||
||Sinovoip Banana Pi M3||`sun8i-a83t-bananapi-m3.dtb`||
||Sinovoip Banana Pi M2 Berry||`sun8i-v40-bananapi-m2-berry.dtb`||

=== Unstable ===

Hardware systems supported only in Sid/Bullseye (tested and confirmed working).

||'''System'''||'''Device Tree Blob'''||'''Notes'''||

=== Unstable untested ===

Hardware systems for which the Sid installer has support code,
but on which installation has not been tested yet.

||'''System'''||'''Device Tree Blob'''||
||Nano Pi Neo Air||`sun8i-h3-nanopi-neo-air.dtb`||
||Nano Pi Neo Plus2||`sun50i-h5-nanopi-neo-plus2.dtb`||
||Olimex A64-OLinuXino-eMMC||`sun50i-a64-olinuxino-emmc.dtb`||

The installer can also be used on other sunxi-based systems as long as device-tree support for them is available, but on those systems manual intervention during the installation is required (see
[[#Installing on systems that are not supported out of the box|below]]).

== Unsupported Platforms ==

=== Stable unsupported ===

Hardware systems tested and confirmed working in Buster or older,
but involves essential non-Debian parts.

||'''System'''||'''Device Tree Blob'''||'''Notes'''||
||Allwinner A23 Evaluation Board||`sun8i-a23-evb.dtb`||
||Allwinner A31 APP4 EVB1 Evaluation Board||`sun6i-a31-app4-evb1.dtb`||
||Allwinner GA10H Quad Core Tablet (v1.1)||`sun8i-a33-ga10h-v1.1.dtb`||
||Auxtek t004 A10s hdmi tv-stick||`sun5i-asun5i-a10s-auxtek-t004.dtb`||
||BA10 tvbox||`sun4i-a10-ba10-tvbox.dtb`||
||Chuwi V7 CW0825 - CSQ CS908 top set box||`sun4i-a10-chuwi-v7-cw0825.dtb`||
||ET Q8 Quad Core Tablet (v1.6)||`sun8i-a33-et-q8-v1.6.dtb`||
||Gemei G9 Tablet||`sun4i-a10-gemei-g9.dtb`||
||HAOYU Electronics Marsboard A10||`sun4i-a10-marsboard.dtb`||
||HSG H702||`sun5i-a13-hsg-h702.dtb`||
||Hyundai A7HD||`sun4i-a10-hyundai-a7hd.dtb`||
||I12 / Q5 / QT840A A20 tvbox||`sun7i-a20-i12-tvbox.dtb`||
||INet-97F Rev 02||`sun4i-a10-inet97fv2.dtb`||
||Ippo Q8H Dual Core Tablet (v1.2)||`sun8i-a23-ippo-q8h-v1.2.dtb`||
||Ippo Q8H Dual Core Tablet (v5)||`sun8i-a23-ippo-q8h-v5.dtb`||
||Jesurun Q5||`sun4i-a10-jesurun-q5.dtb`||
||!LinkSprite pcDuino3 Nano||`sun7i-a20-pcduino3-nano.dtb`|| requires (at least) non-Debian U-boot; on-board Ethernet card needs a non-free firmware, on-board 4GB Flash doesn't work out-of-the-box||
||Mele A1000||`sun4i-a10-a1000.dtb`||[[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=879385|Installation Report]] requires custom build of mainline U-boot; on-board wifi card needs a non-free firmware, installation ||Mele A1000G Quad top set box||`sun6i-a31-mele-a1000g-quad.dtb`||
||Mele I7 Quad top set box||`sun6i-a31-i7.dtb`||
||Mele M3||`sun7i-a20-m3.dtb`||
||Mele M9 top set box||`sun6i-a31-m9.dtb`||
||Merrii A20 Hummingbird||`sun7i-a20-hummingbird.dtb`||
||Merrii A31 Hummingbird||`sun6i-a31-hummingbird.dtb`||
||Merrii A80 Optimus Board||`sun9i-a80-optimus.dtb`||
||Miniand Hackberry||`sun4i-a10-hackberry.dtb`||
||MK802||`sun4i-a10-mk802.dtb`||
||MK802ii||`sun4i-a10-mk802ii.dtb`||
||MK802-A10s||`sun5i-a10s-mk802.dtb`||
||MK808c||`sun7i-a20-mk808c.dtb`||
||Olimex A13-OLinuXino||`sun5i-a13-olinuxino.dtb`||[[https://bugs.debian.org/789727|Installation Report]] requires custom build of mainline U-boot; some EHCI timeouts in u-boot||
||Olimex A13-Olinuxino Micro||`sun5i-a13-olinuxino-micro.dtb`||
||Orange Pi||`sun7i-a20-orangepi.dtb`||
||Orange Pi Mini||`sun7i-a20-orangepi-mini.dtb`||
||!PineRiver Mini X-Plus||`sun4i-a10-mini-xplus.dtb`||
done via eth||
||R7 A10s hdmi tv-stick||`sun5i-a10s-r7-tv-dongle.dtb`||
||Sinlinx !SinA33||`sun8i-a33-sinlinx-sina33.dtb`||
||Utoo P66||`sun5i-a13-utoo-p66.dtb`||
||Wexler TAB7200||`sun7i-a20-wexler-tab7200.dtb`||

== Storage options ==

Debian-Installer allows installing to either a SATA disk or to an MMC/SD card. Installation to the on-board NAND flash available on some sunxi-based systems is '''not''' supported.

Booting the installed system directly from a SATA disk requires a u-boot with AHCI support (see the corresponding [[#u-boot-ahci-support|uboot information]] below).

== Pre-installation preparations ==

On sunxi-based systems, [[#U-boot versions for sunxi-based systems|u-boot]] is the system firmware that initializes the hardware and then allows to boot an operating system. It is the sunxi-equivalent of the BIOS on a PC. In contrast to PCs, where the BIOS is stored in an on-board flash memory chip, on sunxi-based devices u-boot is usually stored on an SD card. Some sunxi-based devices have on-board flash memory and even contain a stripped-down u-boot version in it, but this version is usually unsuitable for Debian. Therefore you usually have to setup an SD card with the appropriate u-boot version for your particular device (see [[#Creating a bootable SD Card with u-boot|below]]) as a prerequisite for installing Debian. If you use the [[#Installing_from_an_SD_card_image|pre-made SD card images with the installer]], this step is not necessary, as these images already contain u-boot.

== Installing over the network by TFTP ==

Debian provides a ready-made netboot tarball ([[http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz|Buster version]], [[http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/netboot.tar.gz|Bullseye version]], [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/netboot.tar.gz|daily sid build]]) that can simply be unpacked in the root directory of a TFTP server. It contains the installer as well as a network boot script which can automatically be executed by [[#Mainline u-boot|mainline u-boot]] as part of the default boot order (MMC/SD -> SATA -> USB mass storage -> TFTP). Manually executing the boot script is possible by entering "run bootcmd_dhcp" at the u-boot prompt.

=== Manually setting up TFTP booting ===

If you do not want to use the netboot tarball, you can of course also manually set up TFTP booting:
 
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setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 -- ${diargs}" setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 --- ${diargs}"
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=== Running the Installer ===
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== Installing from a USB stick ==

The daily installer builds offer the option to install the system from a USB stick, provided you are running mainline u-boot and have a device for which u-boot provides [[#u-boot-ehci-support|EHCI]] support.

Unpack the daily [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/hd-media/hd-media.tar.gz|hd-media tarball]]
or stable [[http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-armhf/current/images/hd-media/hd-media.tar.gz|hd-media tarball]]
onto a USB stick with a filesystem that is supported by u-boot (FAT16 / FAT32 / ext2 / ext3 / ext4) and copy the ISO image of either the weekly testing [[http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/armhf/iso-cd/debian-testing-armhf-xfce-CD-1.iso|Debian/testing CD #1]] or the weekly testing [[http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/armhf/iso-dvd/debian-testing-armhf-DVD-1.iso|Debian/testing DVD #1]]
or for stable [[https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/armhf/iso-cd/debian-10.4.0-armhf-xfce-CD-1.iso| Debian/10.4 CD #1]]
onto the stick.

Notes: Prepare USB stick: Create an empty DOS parition table using fdisk and create a new primary parition. Use mkfs.ext2 to create file system on the new parition. Choose HDMI for installer display: On A20-Olinuxino-Lime2, the serial console is selected by default, so you need to run `bootargs=console=tty1` and `saveenv` commands to choose HDMI display.

Insert the USB stick into the target system and issue the command

{{{
uboot> run bootcmd_usb0
}}}

at the u-boot command prompt to start the installer.

Notice: The combination of the daily-built hd-media tarball and the weekly-built CD/DVD image might not work correctly in periods of kernel transitions in Debian. The installer assumes that the kernel in the hd-media tarball and the kernel modules in the ISO image have the same version, which of course might not be the case directly after a kernel version bump.

== Installing from an SD card image ==

Debian offers SD card images with u-boot and the netinstall
version of the Debian-Installer for various sunxi-based systems for [[https://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/installer-armhf/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/|stable]] or [[https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/|daily builds of unstable]]. The images are provided in the form of a device-specific part (containing the partition table and the device-specific u-boot) and a device-independent part (containing the actual installer), which can be unpacked and concatenated together to build a complete installer image.

The device-specific part is named firmware.<board_name>.img.gz
and the device-independent part is named partition.img.gz. To write a full image to an SD card, simply unpack, concatenate and write the parts to an SD card in a single step with
{{{
zcat firmware.<board_name>.img.gz partition.img.gz > /dev/SDCARD_DEVICE
}}}

These images are meant for the SD card slot on the device and will not work when SD card is inserted into USB based SD card readers. Once the installer is started, it runs completely in the system's RAM and does not need to load anything from the SD card anymore, so you can delete all existing partitions and use the full card for installing Debian. It is recommended to use the "guided partitioning" option in the installer to create a proper partition layout on the SD card.

The above installation methods may require a serial cable to interact with the installer. Debian installer by default uses the HDMI output with simplefb. To change that, at the u-boot prompt, use tty1 as console and disable framebuffer in the installer:
{{{
uboot> setenv console tty1
uboot> setenv bootargs console=tty1 fb=false
uboot> saveenv
uboot> boot
}}}

You can install a non-default system (e.g. an older system using a newer installer) by changing the debconf priority to low when choosing the mirror.

If your USB-Keyboard does not work in u-boot, you can mount the partition.img, copy the configuration directives from boot.scr to boot.cmd (i.e. strip initial "noise") and insert the setenv commands above manually.
Then run the following command
{{{
mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr
}}}
taken from here https://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_U-boot
and the installer will boot in non-framebuffer mode without any further input needed.
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=== Booting the Installed System ===

At the u-boot prompt run the following:
== Booting the installed system ==
=== Booting the Installed System from MMC/SD Card ===

If you are running a current mainline u-boot or a recent u-boot-sunxi
(cf. the [[#U-boot versions for sunxi-based systems|u-boot overview]] below),
have installed the system to an MMC/SD card and have used the guided partitioning option in the installer, auto booting the installed system works without requiring any user interaction. Note that guided partitioning must be selected to use the *whole* card and not only available space. Otherwise Debian installer will not be removed from the card. To fix this then please use the instruction for [[#Creating_a_bootable_SD_Card_with_u-boot|Creating a bootable SD Card with u-boot]] from above to install a recent U-Boot version.

Some background information:

By default, u-boot-sunxi expects the first partition on the MMC/SD card to be the boot partition and to contain either a FAT or an ext2 filesystem. The guided partitioning option in the installer takes care of this and sets up an ext2-formatted /boot partition as the first partition. If you have chosen a different layout, you have to manually set the u-boot environment variable ${partition} to the number of the partition containing /boot.

Mainline u-boot does not impose restrictions on the filesystem type of the boot partition, as long as u-boot generally supports the particular filesystem (which by default includes ext2/ext3/ext4). Mainline u-boot also does not use the ${device}/${partition} scheme used by u-boot-sunxi, but instead automatically checks all available devices for a boot script.

=== Booting the Installed System from a SATA Disk on Mainline U-Boot ===

If booting from MMC fails and a SATA disk is available, mainline u-boot automatically tries to boot from it. If you want to manually boot from a SATA disk at the u-boot prompt, just enter the command "run bootcmd_scsi0".

=== Booting the Installed System from a SATA Disk on U-Boot-Sunxi ===

Note: u-boot-sunxi does by default not support booting from SATA. This paragraph applies only if you use a u-boot-sunxi version on which additional AHCI patches have been applied.

U-boot-sunxi does not have an autoboot mechanism for SATA disks.
To manually boot from a SATA disk on u-boot-sunxi, run the following at the u-boot prompt:
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=== Systems not supported Out-of-the-box ===

This is a bit more fiddly.

First find a suitable device tree blob (DTB) for your board. You might find one in the [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/device-tree|daily builds]], or upstream. Otherwise you might need to write one yourself (or find someone who is willing to do it for you).

Once you have a suitable DTB you can populate the TFTP server with the vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the DTB and create a suitable installer boot script by modifying the one above.

Boot the installer and preceed as usual. Towards the end you will encounter:
== Installing on systems that are not supported out of the box ==

First find a suitable device tree blob (DTB) for your board. You might find one in the [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/device-tree|daily builds]], or in the [[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/devicetree/devicetree-rebasing.git|device-tree git repo]]. The latter is a repository containing all of the device tree files shipped with the upstream Linux kernel but in a separate git tree (which is much quicker to clone and build than the full kernel) which tracks mainline Linux development. You can build all of the ARM (and therefore Allwinner/sunxi) device tree blobs in that tree in only a few seconds devices with:

{{{
$ sudo apt-get install device-tree-compiler git make cpp
$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/devicetree/devicetree-rebasing.git
$ cd devicetree-rebasing
$ make -j all_arm
}}}

The device tree blobs will be found in {{{src/arm/*.dtb}}}. You can build a single device tree by passing it to make instead of {{{all_arm}}}. e.g.

{{{
$ make src/arm/sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb
}}}

Otherwise you might need to write a device tree file yourself (or find someone who is willing to do it for you). If you only have the device tree source (DTS) you can convert it to DTB using these commands:

{{{
$ sudo apt-get install device-tree-compiler
$ dtc -I dts -O dtb infile.dts > outfile.dtb
}}}

Once you have a suitable DTB you can populate the TFTP server with the vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the DTB and create a suitable installer boot script by modifying the one [[#Installing over the network by TFTP|above]].

Boot the installer and proceed as usual. Towards the end you will encounter:
Line 118: Line 326:
This is expected. Make a note of the partitions and continue. Once the installer has completed the you need to boot the resulting system but using the DTB from TFTP in order to fix things up: This is expected. Make a note of the partitions and continue. Once the installer has completed the installation you need to boot the resulting system, but using the DTB from TFTP in order to fix things up. This can be done like in the following example (which assumes an installation to a SATA disk):
Line 154: Line 362:
== Installing to MMC ==

Support for the sunxi MMC controller will be in upstream Linux v3.16, however it has been backported to the v3.15 Debian kernel. However at the time of writing Debian Installer is using v3.14 and hence cannot install to MMC on this platform.

''TBD'': Describe installation to MMC once D-I switches to v3.15.

= Install Using SD Card Images =

See Linux sunxi projects [[http://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_OS_images#Debian|Bootable OS Images]] page.

''NOTE'': Obviously YMMV with these images.

= Mainline kernel and linux-sunxi.org 3.4 kernel =

There are two different Linux kernel series for sunxi-based systems:
 * mainline kernel
 * linux-sunxi.org kernel
Development for sunxi-based systems had originally begun based on an Allwinner android kernel. The [[https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_Kernel|linux-sunxi.org 3.4 kernel series]] is based on this android kernel and is maintained by a group of volunteers at linux-sunxi.org.

The mainline kernel is the "official" Linux kernel series released by Linus Torvalds. Beginning with kernel 3.8, several developers have been working on integrating sunxi support into the mainline kernel. An overview of the progress can be found in the [[https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort|linux-sunxi.org]] wiki.

Debian uses the same kernel on all supported architectures and therefore supports only the mainline kernel. The disadvantage of the mainline kernel compared to the linux-sunxi.org kernel is that not all sunxi-specific drivers have yet been ported. The mainline kernel contains support for serial console, USB, SATA, Ethernet and MMC/SD, but the version in Buster may lack native display and audio drivers for some sunxi hardware. When using mainline u-boot v2015.01 or newer and a suitable kernel version, it is possible to run Linux with graphics support by using the simplefb driver. Simplefb works similar to vesafb on PC hardware - u-boot initializes the display hardware with a fixed mode and the Linux kernel just uses the pre-initialized framebuffer. Support for this kind of operation is available in the mainline kernel from version 3.19 onwards and has been backported to the Debian kernel version 3.16.7-ckt7-1. The major disadvantage of simplefb in comparison to a "proper" display driver is that the kernel has no way to reconfigure the display controller, which means that it is e.g. impossible to change the resolution and there is no display power management available.
Buster has been released with u-boot v2019.01 which has simplefb-support.

First patches to implement a native kernel driver for the display engine used in the A10/A10s/A13/A20 have been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list, but those are still preliminary and probably won't enter the mainline kernel before version 4.6. An audio driver that supports the headphone jacks on some sunxi-based systems has recently been written; support for the first boards has been included in kernel 4.4, support for further boards is planned for kernel 4.5.
Linux kernel in Buster is 4.19.

While the installer always uses the mainline kernel, it is possible to manually install a linux-sunxi.org kernel on a Debian system later on, but in that case you are on your own with regard to kernel updates and bootloader setup. Several of the automatic mechanisms in Debian to smoothly handle kernel updates and bootloader configuration will not work properly with the linux-sunxi.org 3.4 series.

= U-boot versions for sunxi-based systems =

== Overview ==
There are several u-boot versions for sunxi-based systems:

 * the original Allwinner u-boot
 * u-boot-sunxi
 * mainline u-boot

=== Allwinner u-boot ===
You can mostly ignore the original Allwinner u-boot for Debian
purposes. Compared to u-boot-sunxi and in particular to mainline u-boot its codebase is rather old, and it relies on proprietary bootloader components ("boot0"/"boot1") to perform basic hardware initialization.
About the only use case for it is booting from the NAND flash available on some sunxi-based boards in conjunction with using an android or android-derived kernel version that contains the original Allwinner NAND flash driver for
Android.

=== U-boot-sunxi ===
[[https://github.com/linux-sunxi/u-boot-sunxi|U-boot-sunxi]] is derived
from the original Allwinner u-boot and is maintained by a group of
volunteers at linux-sunxi.org. It contains an SPL component that
takes care of the basic hardware initialization and therefore does
not need the proprietary boot0/boot1 loaders from Allwinner. It can
boot locally from MMC/SD card and over the network by TFTP, but it
cannot access the NAND flash. The current version (as of 08/2014)
has been updated to the featureset of mainline u-boot v2014.04; it
does not have [[#u-boot-psci-support|PSCI]]-, [[#u-boot-ahci-support|AHCI]]- and [[#u-boot-ehci-support|EHCI]]-support. Development of u-boot-sunxi has mostly stopped; active development happens in mainline u-boot nowadays. Therefore u-boot-sunxi is only interesting for a few systems which are not yet supported by mainline u-boot.

=== Mainline u-boot ===
[[http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot/WebHome|Mainline u-boot]] is the
official upstream u-boot version. It contains [[#u-boot-psci-support|PSCI]]-, [[#u-boot-ahci-support|AHCI]]- and [[#u-boot-ehci-support|EHCI]]-support.
The first mainline u-boot version with sunxi support was v2014.10, the current mainline u-boot (v2016.01) has added support for many more sunxi-based systems. If a system is supported by mainline u-boot, you should use it instead of u-boot-sunxi. Mainline u-boot has - besides the master git tree at http://git.denx.de/u-boot.git/ - so-called "custodian trees" for each
supported platform, in which platform-specific changes get integrated
first before being merged into the central u-boot git
repository for the next release. The sunxi custodian tree is available
at http://git.denx.de/u-boot-sunxi.git/ and provides "bleeding-edge" development versions. Those are primarily interesting for developers, normal users should use the master git tree instead.
 
During the v2014.10 development cycle for mainline u-boot, some rather invasive changes have been introduced. This includes restructuring the build system and introducing a new default environment and a new generic bootcmd handling.
The new default environment is not fully compatible with some older bootscripts written for u-boot-sunxi, but flash-kernel >= 3.24 creates bootscripts that work with both the old and the new default environment. If you are using a flash-kernel version older than 3.24 and intend to change from u-boot-sunxi to mainline u-boot, you should update flash-kernel first.

== Creating a bootable SD Card with u-boot ==
Debian provides mainline u-boot images for a variety of supported systems in the daily installer builds at [[http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/u-boot/]]. The daily builds contain both a ready-made gzipped SD card image (<boardname>.sdcard.img.gz) as well as a gzipped "bare" u-boot image (u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin.gz).

The easiest way to create a bootable SD card with u-boot is to copy the ready-made
card image to the card, e.g. with
{{{
$ zcat Cubietruck.sdcard.img.gz > /dev/SDCARD_DEVICE
}}}
Please note that writing the SD card image overwrites an already existing partition table on the card and thereby causes loss of any data that was on the card previously!

U-Boot images can also be taken from the [[https://packages.debian.org/jessie/armhf/u-boot-sunxi/filelist|u-boot-sunxi:armhf]] package. To create a bootable SD card with help of the u-boot-sunxi package, copy the appropriate u-boot image to offset 8kb on the SD card, e.g. with

{{{
$ dd if=/usr/lib/u-boot/Cubietruck/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/SDCARD_DEVICE bs=1k seek=8
}}}

for the Cubietruck. This method keeps an existing partition table on the SD card untouched.

Please note that the u-boot-sunxi package contains both normal as well as FEL images for various systems. FEL mode is a special boot mode that allows sunxi-based systems to be booted via a USB cable from another system instead of from a mass storage device. FEL mode requires specifically adapted u-boot builds which are unsuitable for booting from SD card, so use the normal non-FEL images for building bootable SD cards.

To install the u-boot-sunxi:armhf package on a non-armhf system (e.g. on an amd64-based PC), you can use Debian's multiarch functionality:

{{{
$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install u-boot-sunxi:armhf
}}}

<<Anchor(u-boot-psci-support)>>
== SMP/PSCI support ==

For SMP support on Allwinner SOCs, i.e. for using more than one CPU
core, the mainline Linux kernel requires support for PSCI (Power
State Coordination Interface) in u-boot, which is only available in mainline u-boot.

<<Anchor(u-boot-ahci-support)>>
== AHCI support ==

AHCI support allows u-boot to boot the kernel, initrd and dtb from a
SATA harddisk. U-boot itself has still to be installed on an SD
card, but the rest of the system can be put onto a (much faster)
harddisk. This feature is available in mainline u-boot for most mainline-supported systems with a SATA socket.

<<Anchor(u-boot-ehci-support)>>
== EHCI support ==

EHCI support allows u-boot to boot the kernel, initrd and dtb from a
USB mass storage device such as a USB memory stick or a USB harddisk.
U-boot itself has still to be installed on an SD card, but the rest
of the system can be put onto a USB device. This feature is
available in mainline u-boot for most mainline-supported systems with a USB host (type "A") socket.

= Board Specific Information =

== Cubietech Cubietruck ==

Wifi requires non-free firmware DebianPkg:firmware-brcm80211 at least version 0.42 plus an additional firmware file which is not yet packaged but can be installed with:

{{{
wget -O /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt http://dl.cubieboard.org/public/Cubieboard/benn/firmware/ap6210/nvram_ap6210.txt
}}}

Message such as {{{brcmfmac: brcmf_fil_cmd_data: Failed err=-23}}} are expected and do not represent a actual problem.

== Olimex A20-OLinuXino-MICRO/A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 + 7" or 10"LCD ==

If you have one of those boards+lcd display and want to use the mainline kernel with simplefb http://karme.de/prisirah/ might be interesting for you.

== Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 rev. K ==

1G network is not working on these boards without a u-boot built with {{{CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3}}} option (see [[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=911560|#911560]]). Here's the recipe to build and install u-boot for this card.

Note that the revision of the card is written on the PCB of the device.

Setup u-boot source:

 * {{{git clone https://salsa.debian.org/debian/u-boot.git}}}
 * {{{sudo apt build-dep u-boot}}}

In u-boot repository:

 * apply all debian patches: {{{quilt push -a}}}
 * run: {{{make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- A20-OLinuXino-Lime2_defconfig}}}
 * edit .config to set CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3 (or run {{{make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- menuconfig}}}
 * build u-boot: {{{make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf-}}}


You should get a u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin file which is the bootloader to install on your SD card (see [[https://linux-sunxi.org/Bootable_SD_card#Bootloader|Sunxi doc]])

First backup your SD card:

 * {{{sudo cp /dev/$sdcard backup.img}}}

Then copy the bootloader:

 * {{{sudo dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/$sdcard bs=1024 seek=8}}}

In both case, {{{$sdcard}}} is to be replaced with the block device file of your SD card.


== Banana PI M2 Berry ==

(Those are just notes at this point, added by LucasNussbaum)

 * You will need a UART (console) cable.

=== Installing Debian ===

 * U-Boot has no support for ethernet for this device. So no TFTP install.
 * What worked for me is:
  * Use d-i daily build, and a daily ISO. (Support was added to Debian testing mid-march 2019)
   * Get the firmware and partition image from https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/hd-media/SD-card-images/
   * Write a Debian installer iso image to a USB stick, in an ext4 partition. For example https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily/20190404-5/armhf/iso-cd/debian-testing-armhf-netinst.iso or equivalent
  * Start the device. It will start the installer, and then find the ISO image. You don't need ethernet during the installation.

=== Post-installation stuff ===

 * It might be a bit difficult to get the system to boot, because the installer does not set everything up correctly. You will need to install flash-kernel.
 * Ethernet does not work, because the device tree file for the device is incomplete. Add the data related to ethernet in the M2 ultra dts and recompile the dtd.
 * Wifi needs an additional firmware that is not shipped in the firmware-brcm80211 package (see https://bugs.debian.org/797779, that is not going to be fixed).

.

Introduction

Support for boards using the Allwinner "sunxi" (sun4i, sun5i, sun6i, sun7i, sun8i, sun50i) family of processors, e.g. A10, A13, A31/A31s, A20, A23/A33, A64, etc.

Install Using Debian-Installer

Supported Platforms

Debian-installer should work out of the box on all the following sunxi-based systems, but as the developers do not have access to all of them, the installer has only been tested on particular systems. If you have used the installer on one of the untested systems, please submit an installation-report to the Debian project (cf. the Submitting Installation Reports chapter in the Debian installation-guide).

Stable

Hardware systems tested and confirmed working in Buster or older.

System

Device Tree Blob

Notes

Cubietech Cubieboard

sun4i-a10-cubieboard.dtb

Installation Reports: [1], [2]

Cubietech Cubieboard2

sun7i-a20-cubieboard2.dtb

Cubietech Cubietruck (Cubieboard3)

sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb

LeMaker Banana Pi

sun7i-a20-bananapi.dtb

LeMaker Banana Pro

sun7i-a20-bananapro.dtb

Installation Report

Olimex A10-OLinuXino-LIME

sun4i-a10-olinuxino-lime.dtb

Olimex A10s-Olinuxino Micro

sun5i-a10s-olinuxino-micro.dtb

Installation Report

Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME

sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime.dtb

Installation Report

Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2

sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime2.dtb

Installation Report

Olimex A20-Olinuxino Micro

sun7i-a20-olinuxino-micro.dtb

Installation Report

Olimex A20-SOM-EVB

sun7i-a20-olimex-som-evb.dtb

Installation Report (gigabit ethernet issues)

Olimex Teres-I

sun50i-a64-teres-i.dtb

Wiki page

Pine64 PINE A64

sun50i-a64-pine64.dtb

Wiki page

Pine64 PINE A64+

sun50i-a64-pine64-plus.dtb

Wiki page

Stable untested

Hardware systems for which the installer has support code in Buster or older, but on which installation has not been tested yet.

System

Device Tree Blob

CHIP

sun5i-r8-chip.dtb

Cubietech Cubieboard4

sun9i-a80-cubieboard4.dtb

Cubietech Cubietruck Plus (Cubieboard5)

sun8i-a83t-cubietruck-plus.dtb

Lamobo R1

sun7i-a20-lamobo-r1.dtb

LinkSprite pcDuino

sun4i-a10-pcduino.dtb

LinkSprite pcDuino3

sun7i-a20-pcduino3.dtb

Mini-X

sun4i-a10-mini-xplus.dtb

Nano Pi Neo

sun8i-h3-nanopi-neo.dtb

Nano Pi Neo2

sun50i-h5-nanopi-neo2.dtb

Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-eMMC

sun7i-a20-olinuxino-lime2-emmc.dtb

Olimex A64-OLinuXino

sun50i-a64-olinuxino.dtb

Orange Pi Plus

sun8i-h3-orangepi-plus.dtb

Orange Pi Zero

sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-zero.dtb

Orange Pi Zero Plus2

sun50i-h5-orangepi-zero-plus2.dtb

Pine64 PINE A64-LTS

sun50i-a64-pine64-lts.dtb

Pine64 Pinebook

sun50i-a64-pinebook.dtb

Sinovoip Banana Pi M3

sun8i-a83t-bananapi-m3.dtb

Sinovoip Banana Pi M2 Berry

sun8i-v40-bananapi-m2-berry.dtb

Unstable

Hardware systems supported only in Sid/Bullseye (tested and confirmed working).

System

Device Tree Blob

Notes

Unstable untested

Hardware systems for which the Sid installer has support code, but on which installation has not been tested yet.

System

Device Tree Blob

Nano Pi Neo Air

sun8i-h3-nanopi-neo-air.dtb

Nano Pi Neo Plus2

sun50i-h5-nanopi-neo-plus2.dtb

Olimex A64-OLinuXino-eMMC

sun50i-a64-olinuxino-emmc.dtb

The installer can also be used on other sunxi-based systems as long as device-tree support for them is available, but on those systems manual intervention during the installation is required (see below).

Unsupported Platforms

Stable unsupported

Hardware systems tested and confirmed working in Buster or older, but involves essential non-Debian parts.

System

Device Tree Blob

Notes

Allwinner A23 Evaluation Board

sun8i-a23-evb.dtb

Allwinner A31 APP4 EVB1 Evaluation Board

sun6i-a31-app4-evb1.dtb

Allwinner GA10H Quad Core Tablet (v1.1)

sun8i-a33-ga10h-v1.1.dtb

Auxtek t004 A10s hdmi tv-stick

sun5i-asun5i-a10s-auxtek-t004.dtb

BA10 tvbox

sun4i-a10-ba10-tvbox.dtb

Chuwi V7 CW0825 - CSQ CS908 top set box

sun4i-a10-chuwi-v7-cw0825.dtb

ET Q8 Quad Core Tablet (v1.6)

sun8i-a33-et-q8-v1.6.dtb

Gemei G9 Tablet

sun4i-a10-gemei-g9.dtb

HAOYU Electronics Marsboard A10

sun4i-a10-marsboard.dtb

HSG H702

sun5i-a13-hsg-h702.dtb

Hyundai A7HD

sun4i-a10-hyundai-a7hd.dtb

I12 / Q5 / QT840A A20 tvbox

sun7i-a20-i12-tvbox.dtb

INet-97F Rev 02

sun4i-a10-inet97fv2.dtb

Ippo Q8H Dual Core Tablet (v1.2)

sun8i-a23-ippo-q8h-v1.2.dtb

Ippo Q8H Dual Core Tablet (v5)

sun8i-a23-ippo-q8h-v5.dtb

Jesurun Q5

sun4i-a10-jesurun-q5.dtb

LinkSprite pcDuino3 Nano

sun7i-a20-pcduino3-nano.dtb

requires (at least) non-Debian U-boot; on-board Ethernet card needs a non-free firmware, on-board 4GB Flash doesn't work out-of-the-box

Mele A1000

sun4i-a10-a1000.dtb

Installation Report requires custom build of mainline U-boot; on-board wifi card needs a non-free firmware, installation

Mele A1000G Quad top set box

sun6i-a31-mele-a1000g-quad.dtb

Mele I7 Quad top set box

sun6i-a31-i7.dtb

Mele M3

sun7i-a20-m3.dtb

Mele M9 top set box

sun6i-a31-m9.dtb

Merrii A20 Hummingbird

sun7i-a20-hummingbird.dtb

Merrii A31 Hummingbird

sun6i-a31-hummingbird.dtb

Merrii A80 Optimus Board

sun9i-a80-optimus.dtb

Miniand Hackberry

sun4i-a10-hackberry.dtb

MK802

sun4i-a10-mk802.dtb

MK802ii

sun4i-a10-mk802ii.dtb

MK802-A10s

sun5i-a10s-mk802.dtb

MK808c

sun7i-a20-mk808c.dtb

Olimex A13-OLinuXino

sun5i-a13-olinuxino.dtb

Installation Report requires custom build of mainline U-boot; some EHCI timeouts in u-boot

Olimex A13-Olinuxino Micro

sun5i-a13-olinuxino-micro.dtb

Orange Pi

sun7i-a20-orangepi.dtb

Orange Pi Mini

sun7i-a20-orangepi-mini.dtb

PineRiver Mini X-Plus

sun4i-a10-mini-xplus.dtb

done via eth||

R7 A10s hdmi tv-stick

sun5i-a10s-r7-tv-dongle.dtb

Sinlinx SinA33

sun8i-a33-sinlinx-sina33.dtb

Utoo P66

sun5i-a13-utoo-p66.dtb

Wexler TAB7200

sun7i-a20-wexler-tab7200.dtb

Storage options

Debian-Installer allows installing to either a SATA disk or to an MMC/SD card. Installation to the on-board NAND flash available on some sunxi-based systems is not supported.

Booting the installed system directly from a SATA disk requires a u-boot with AHCI support (see the corresponding uboot information below).

Pre-installation preparations

On sunxi-based systems, u-boot is the system firmware that initializes the hardware and then allows to boot an operating system. It is the sunxi-equivalent of the BIOS on a PC. In contrast to PCs, where the BIOS is stored in an on-board flash memory chip, on sunxi-based devices u-boot is usually stored on an SD card. Some sunxi-based devices have on-board flash memory and even contain a stripped-down u-boot version in it, but this version is usually unsuitable for Debian. Therefore you usually have to setup an SD card with the appropriate u-boot version for your particular device (see below) as a prerequisite for installing Debian. If you use the pre-made SD card images with the installer, this step is not necessary, as these images already contain u-boot.

Installing over the network by TFTP

Debian provides a ready-made netboot tarball (Buster version, Bullseye version, daily sid build) that can simply be unpacked in the root directory of a TFTP server. It contains the installer as well as a network boot script which can automatically be executed by mainline u-boot as part of the default boot order (MMC/SD -> SATA -> USB mass storage -> TFTP). Manually executing the boot script is possible by entering "run bootcmd_dhcp" at the u-boot prompt.

Manually setting up TFTP booting

If you do not want to use the netboot tarball, you can of course also manually set up TFTP booting:

Download the kernel vmlinuz, installer initrd.gz and the appropriate Flattended Device Tree (FDT) Blob (or DTB) for the board and copy them to a path on your TFTP server. e.g.

# mkdir -p /srv/tftp/didaily/armhf/daily/{netboot,device-tree}
# cd /srv/tftp/didaily/armhf/daily/
# wget -P netboot http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/vmlinuz http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/netboot/initrd.gz
# wget -P device-tree http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/device-tree/sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb 

Create a script to boot the installer. e.g. /srv/tftp/didaily/cubietruck:

#setenv diargs <EXTRA ARGUMENTS>

setenv fdt_addr       0x43000000
setenv ramdisk_addr_r 0x48000000
setenv kernel_addr_r  0x47000000

setenv dibase /didaily/armhf/daily

tftp ${kernel_addr_r} ${dibase}/netboot/vmlinuz
setenv bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200 --- ${diargs}"

tftp ${fdt_addr} ${dibase}/device-tree/sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb
fdt addr ${fdt_addr} 0x40000

tftp ${ramdisk_addr_r} ${dibase}/netboot/initrd.gz
bootz ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr}

then to make a script which u-boot can run:

# mkimage -T script -A arm -d /srv/tftp/didaily/cubietruck /srv/tftp/didaily/cubietruck.scr

At the u-boot prompt, boot the images which were just downloaded via the script:

uboot> setenv autoload no
uboot> dhcp
uboot> tftp ${scriptaddr} /didaily/cubietruck.scr
uboot> source ${scriptaddr}

Install in the usual way. Use setenv diargs foo=bar to pass arguments to the installer (e.g. for preseeding)

Installing from a USB stick

The daily installer builds offer the option to install the system from a USB stick, provided you are running mainline u-boot and have a device for which u-boot provides EHCI support.

Unpack the daily hd-media tarball or stable hd-media tarball onto a USB stick with a filesystem that is supported by u-boot (FAT16 / FAT32 / ext2 / ext3 / ext4) and copy the ISO image of either the weekly testing Debian/testing CD #1 or the weekly testing Debian/testing DVD #1 or for stable Debian/10.4 CD #1 onto the stick.

Notes: Prepare USB stick: Create an empty DOS parition table using fdisk and create a new primary parition. Use mkfs.ext2 to create file system on the new parition. Choose HDMI for installer display: On A20-Olinuxino-Lime2, the serial console is selected by default, so you need to run bootargs=console=tty1 and saveenv commands to choose HDMI display.

Insert the USB stick into the target system and issue the command

uboot> run bootcmd_usb0

at the u-boot command prompt to start the installer.

Notice: The combination of the daily-built hd-media tarball and the weekly-built CD/DVD image might not work correctly in periods of kernel transitions in Debian. The installer assumes that the kernel in the hd-media tarball and the kernel modules in the ISO image have the same version, which of course might not be the case directly after a kernel version bump.

Installing from an SD card image

Debian offers SD card images with u-boot and the netinstall version of the Debian-Installer for various sunxi-based systems for stable or daily builds of unstable. The images are provided in the form of a device-specific part (containing the partition table and the device-specific u-boot) and a device-independent part (containing the actual installer), which can be unpacked and concatenated together to build a complete installer image.

The device-specific part is named firmware.<board_name>.img.gz and the device-independent part is named partition.img.gz. To write a full image to an SD card, simply unpack, concatenate and write the parts to an SD card in a single step with

zcat firmware.<board_name>.img.gz partition.img.gz > /dev/SDCARD_DEVICE

These images are meant for the SD card slot on the device and will not work when SD card is inserted into USB based SD card readers. Once the installer is started, it runs completely in the system's RAM and does not need to load anything from the SD card anymore, so you can delete all existing partitions and use the full card for installing Debian. It is recommended to use the "guided partitioning" option in the installer to create a proper partition layout on the SD card.

The above installation methods may require a serial cable to interact with the installer. Debian installer by default uses the HDMI output with simplefb. To change that, at the u-boot prompt, use tty1 as console and disable framebuffer in the installer:

uboot> setenv console tty1
uboot> setenv bootargs console=tty1 fb=false
uboot> saveenv
uboot> boot

You can install a non-default system (e.g. an older system using a newer installer) by changing the debconf priority to low when choosing the mirror.

If your USB-Keyboard does not work in u-boot, you can mount the partition.img, copy the configuration directives from boot.scr to boot.cmd (i.e. strip initial "noise") and insert the setenv commands above manually. Then run the following command

mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr

taken from here https://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_U-boot and the installer will boot in non-framebuffer mode without any further input needed.

Booting the installed system

Booting the Installed System from MMC/SD Card

If you are running a current mainline u-boot or a recent u-boot-sunxi (cf. the u-boot overview below), have installed the system to an MMC/SD card and have used the guided partitioning option in the installer, auto booting the installed system works without requiring any user interaction. Note that guided partitioning must be selected to use the *whole* card and not only available space. Otherwise Debian installer will not be removed from the card. To fix this then please use the instruction for Creating a bootable SD Card with u-boot from above to install a recent U-Boot version.

Some background information:

By default, u-boot-sunxi expects the first partition on the MMC/SD card to be the boot partition and to contain either a FAT or an ext2 filesystem. The guided partitioning option in the installer takes care of this and sets up an ext2-formatted /boot partition as the first partition. If you have chosen a different layout, you have to manually set the u-boot environment variable ${partition} to the number of the partition containing /boot.

Mainline u-boot does not impose restrictions on the filesystem type of the boot partition, as long as u-boot generally supports the particular filesystem (which by default includes ext2/ext3/ext4). Mainline u-boot also does not use the ${device}/${partition} scheme used by u-boot-sunxi, but instead automatically checks all available devices for a boot script.

Booting the Installed System from a SATA Disk on Mainline U-Boot

If booting from MMC fails and a SATA disk is available, mainline u-boot automatically tries to boot from it. If you want to manually boot from a SATA disk at the u-boot prompt, just enter the command "run bootcmd_scsi0".

Booting the Installed System from a SATA Disk on U-Boot-Sunxi

Note: u-boot-sunxi does by default not support booting from SATA. This paragraph applies only if you use a u-boot-sunxi version on which additional AHCI patches have been applied.

U-boot-sunxi does not have an autoboot mechanism for SATA disks. To manually boot from a SATA disk on u-boot-sunxi, run the following at the u-boot prompt:

uboot> scsi scan
uboot> setenv device scsi
uboot> setenv partition 0
uboot> load ${device} ${partition} ${scriptaddr} boot.scr
uboot> setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/sda2 rootwait
uboot> source ${scriptaddr}

This can be made the default with:

uboot> setenv device scsi
uboot> setenv partition 0
uboot> setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/sda2 rootwait
uboot> setenv boot_debian scsi scan\;load \${device} \${partition} \${scriptaddr} boot.scr\;source \${scriptaddr}
uboot> setenv bootcmd run boot_debian
uboot> saveenv
uboot> boot

Installing on systems that are not supported out of the box

First find a suitable device tree blob (DTB) for your board. You might find one in the daily builds, or in the device-tree git repo. The latter is a repository containing all of the device tree files shipped with the upstream Linux kernel but in a separate git tree (which is much quicker to clone and build than the full kernel) which tracks mainline Linux development. You can build all of the ARM (and therefore Allwinner/sunxi) device tree blobs in that tree in only a few seconds devices with:

$ sudo apt-get install device-tree-compiler git make cpp
$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/devicetree/devicetree-rebasing.git
$ cd devicetree-rebasing
$ make -j all_arm

The device tree blobs will be found in src/arm/*.dtb. You can build a single device tree by passing it to make instead of all_arm. e.g.

$ make src/arm/sun7i-a20-cubietruck.dtb

Otherwise you might need to write a device tree file yourself (or find someone who is willing to do it for you). If you only have the device tree source (DTS) you can convert it to DTB using these commands:

$ sudo apt-get install device-tree-compiler
$ dtc -I dts -O dtb infile.dts > outfile.dtb

Once you have a suitable DTB you can populate the TFTP server with the vmlinuz, initrd.gz and the DTB and create a suitable installer boot script by modifying the one above.

Boot the installer and proceed as usual. Towards the end you will encounter:

   ┌─────────────────┤ [!] Continue without boot loader ├──────────────────┐
   │                                                                       │
   │                       No boot loader installed                        │
   │ No boot loader has been installed, either because you chose not to or │
   │ because your specific architecture doesn't support a boot loader yet. │
   │                                                                       │
   │ You will need to boot manually with the /vmlinuz kernel on partition  │
   │ /dev/sda1 and root=/dev/sda2 passed as a kernel argument.             │
   │                                                                       │
   │                              <Continue>                               │
   │                                                                       │
   └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

This is expected. Make a note of the partitions and continue. Once the installer has completed the installation you need to boot the resulting system, but using the DTB from TFTP in order to fix things up. This can be done like in the following example (which assumes an installation to a SATA disk):

uboot> setenv fdt_addr       0x43000000
uboot> setenv ramdisk_addr_r 0x48000000
uboot> setenv kernel_addr_r  0x47000000
uboot> setenv dibase /didaily/armhf/daily
uboot> setenv autoload no;dhcp
uboot> tftp ${fdt_addr} ${dibase}/device-tree/sun7i-a20-cubieboard2.dtb
uboot> fdt addr ${fdt_addr} 0x40000
uboot> scsi scan
uboot> load scsi 0 ${kernel_addr_r} /vmlinuz
uboot> load scsi 0 ${ramdisk_addr_r} /initrd.img
uboot> setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/sda2 rootwait
uboot> bootz ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr}

This should now boot you to a login prompt.

Login and install flash-kernel and the u-boot-tools:

# apt-get install flash-kernel u-boot-tools

Now you need to create a flash-kernel database entry. Start by copying the entries for Cubietech Cubietruck from /usr/share/flash-kernel/db/all.db to /etc/flash-kernel/db. Now you need to modify the Machine and DTB-Id fields.

For the Machine use the output of:

# cat /proc/device-tree/model ; echo

For DTB-Id if you used a DTB from the daily builds then use that name for DTB-Id. If you got the DTB from somewhere else then install it as /boot/dtb-$(uname -r) and omit the DTB-Id field. In this case you will need to take care around kernel upgrades.

Now run flash-kernel and reboot. At this point you should be able to boot using the process from Booting the Installed System above. If this fails the boot again using the manual method described above and try again e.g. fix your /etc/flash-kernel/db.

Once you have it working run reportbug flash-kernel and report a wishlist bug to support your platform. Be sure to include the contents of /etc/flash-kernel/db and say where the DTB came from.

Mainline kernel and linux-sunxi.org 3.4 kernel

There are two different Linux kernel series for sunxi-based systems:

  • mainline kernel
  • linux-sunxi.org kernel

Development for sunxi-based systems had originally begun based on an Allwinner android kernel. The linux-sunxi.org 3.4 kernel series is based on this android kernel and is maintained by a group of volunteers at linux-sunxi.org.

The mainline kernel is the "official" Linux kernel series released by Linus Torvalds. Beginning with kernel 3.8, several developers have been working on integrating sunxi support into the mainline kernel. An overview of the progress can be found in the linux-sunxi.org wiki.

Debian uses the same kernel on all supported architectures and therefore supports only the mainline kernel. The disadvantage of the mainline kernel compared to the linux-sunxi.org kernel is that not all sunxi-specific drivers have yet been ported. The mainline kernel contains support for serial console, USB, SATA, Ethernet and MMC/SD, but the version in Buster may lack native display and audio drivers for some sunxi hardware. When using mainline u-boot v2015.01 or newer and a suitable kernel version, it is possible to run Linux with graphics support by using the simplefb driver. Simplefb works similar to vesafb on PC hardware - u-boot initializes the display hardware with a fixed mode and the Linux kernel just uses the pre-initialized framebuffer. Support for this kind of operation is available in the mainline kernel from version 3.19 onwards and has been backported to the Debian kernel version 3.16.7-ckt7-1. The major disadvantage of simplefb in comparison to a "proper" display driver is that the kernel has no way to reconfigure the display controller, which means that it is e.g. impossible to change the resolution and there is no display power management available. Buster has been released with u-boot v2019.01 which has simplefb-support.

First patches to implement a native kernel driver for the display engine used in the A10/A10s/A13/A20 have been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list, but those are still preliminary and probably won't enter the mainline kernel before version 4.6. An audio driver that supports the headphone jacks on some sunxi-based systems has recently been written; support for the first boards has been included in kernel 4.4, support for further boards is planned for kernel 4.5. Linux kernel in Buster is 4.19.

While the installer always uses the mainline kernel, it is possible to manually install a linux-sunxi.org kernel on a Debian system later on, but in that case you are on your own with regard to kernel updates and bootloader setup. Several of the automatic mechanisms in Debian to smoothly handle kernel updates and bootloader configuration will not work properly with the linux-sunxi.org 3.4 series.

U-boot versions for sunxi-based systems

Overview

There are several u-boot versions for sunxi-based systems:

  • the original Allwinner u-boot
  • u-boot-sunxi
  • mainline u-boot

Allwinner u-boot

You can mostly ignore the original Allwinner u-boot for Debian purposes. Compared to u-boot-sunxi and in particular to mainline u-boot its codebase is rather old, and it relies on proprietary bootloader components ("boot0"/"boot1") to perform basic hardware initialization. About the only use case for it is booting from the NAND flash available on some sunxi-based boards in conjunction with using an android or android-derived kernel version that contains the original Allwinner NAND flash driver for Android.

U-boot-sunxi

U-boot-sunxi is derived from the original Allwinner u-boot and is maintained by a group of volunteers at linux-sunxi.org. It contains an SPL component that takes care of the basic hardware initialization and therefore does not need the proprietary boot0/boot1 loaders from Allwinner. It can boot locally from MMC/SD card and over the network by TFTP, but it cannot access the NAND flash. The current version (as of 08/2014) has been updated to the featureset of mainline u-boot v2014.04; it does not have PSCI-, AHCI- and EHCI-support. Development of u-boot-sunxi has mostly stopped; active development happens in mainline u-boot nowadays. Therefore u-boot-sunxi is only interesting for a few systems which are not yet supported by mainline u-boot.

Mainline u-boot

Mainline u-boot is the official upstream u-boot version. It contains PSCI-, AHCI- and EHCI-support. The first mainline u-boot version with sunxi support was v2014.10, the current mainline u-boot (v2016.01) has added support for many more sunxi-based systems. If a system is supported by mainline u-boot, you should use it instead of u-boot-sunxi. Mainline u-boot has - besides the master git tree at http://git.denx.de/u-boot.git/ - so-called "custodian trees" for each supported platform, in which platform-specific changes get integrated first before being merged into the central u-boot git repository for the next release. The sunxi custodian tree is available at http://git.denx.de/u-boot-sunxi.git/ and provides "bleeding-edge" development versions. Those are primarily interesting for developers, normal users should use the master git tree instead.

During the v2014.10 development cycle for mainline u-boot, some rather invasive changes have been introduced. This includes restructuring the build system and introducing a new default environment and a new generic bootcmd handling. The new default environment is not fully compatible with some older bootscripts written for u-boot-sunxi, but flash-kernel >= 3.24 creates bootscripts that work with both the old and the new default environment. If you are using a flash-kernel version older than 3.24 and intend to change from u-boot-sunxi to mainline u-boot, you should update flash-kernel first.

Creating a bootable SD Card with u-boot

Debian provides mainline u-boot images for a variety of supported systems in the daily installer builds at http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/daily/u-boot/. The daily builds contain both a ready-made gzipped SD card image (<boardname>.sdcard.img.gz) as well as a gzipped "bare" u-boot image (u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin.gz).

The easiest way to create a bootable SD card with u-boot is to copy the ready-made card image to the card, e.g. with

$ zcat Cubietruck.sdcard.img.gz > /dev/SDCARD_DEVICE

Please note that writing the SD card image overwrites an already existing partition table on the card and thereby causes loss of any data that was on the card previously!

U-Boot images can also be taken from the u-boot-sunxi:armhf package. To create a bootable SD card with help of the u-boot-sunxi package, copy the appropriate u-boot image to offset 8kb on the SD card, e.g. with

$ dd if=/usr/lib/u-boot/Cubietruck/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/SDCARD_DEVICE bs=1k seek=8

for the Cubietruck. This method keeps an existing partition table on the SD card untouched.

Please note that the u-boot-sunxi package contains both normal as well as FEL images for various systems. FEL mode is a special boot mode that allows sunxi-based systems to be booted via a USB cable from another system instead of from a mass storage device. FEL mode requires specifically adapted u-boot builds which are unsuitable for booting from SD card, so use the normal non-FEL images for building bootable SD cards.

To install the u-boot-sunxi:armhf package on a non-armhf system (e.g. on an amd64-based PC), you can use Debian's multiarch functionality:

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture armhf
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install u-boot-sunxi:armhf

SMP/PSCI support

For SMP support on Allwinner SOCs, i.e. for using more than one CPU core, the mainline Linux kernel requires support for PSCI (Power State Coordination Interface) in u-boot, which is only available in mainline u-boot.

AHCI support

AHCI support allows u-boot to boot the kernel, initrd and dtb from a SATA harddisk. U-boot itself has still to be installed on an SD card, but the rest of the system can be put onto a (much faster) harddisk. This feature is available in mainline u-boot for most mainline-supported systems with a SATA socket.

EHCI support

EHCI support allows u-boot to boot the kernel, initrd and dtb from a USB mass storage device such as a USB memory stick or a USB harddisk. U-boot itself has still to be installed on an SD card, but the rest of the system can be put onto a USB device. This feature is available in mainline u-boot for most mainline-supported systems with a USB host (type "A") socket.

Board Specific Information

Cubietech Cubietruck

Wifi requires non-free firmware firmware-brcm80211 at least version 0.42 plus an additional firmware file which is not yet packaged but can be installed with:

wget -O /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt http://dl.cubieboard.org/public/Cubieboard/benn/firmware/ap6210/nvram_ap6210.txt

Message such as brcmfmac: brcmf_fil_cmd_data: Failed err=-23 are expected and do not represent a actual problem.

Olimex A20-OLinuXino-MICRO/A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 + 7" or 10"LCD

If you have one of those boards+lcd display and want to use the mainline kernel with simplefb http://karme.de/prisirah/ might be interesting for you.

Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 rev. K

1G network is not working on these boards without a u-boot built with CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3 option (see #911560). Here's the recipe to build and install u-boot for this card.

Note that the revision of the card is written on the PCB of the device.

Setup u-boot source:

  • git clone https://salsa.debian.org/debian/u-boot.git

  • sudo apt build-dep u-boot

In u-boot repository:

  • apply all debian patches: quilt push -a

  • run: make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- A20-OLinuXino-Lime2_defconfig

  • edit .config to set CONFIG_GMAC_TX_DELAY=3 (or run make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- menuconfig

  • build u-boot: make CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf-

You should get a u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin file which is the bootloader to install on your SD card (see Sunxi doc)

First backup your SD card:

  • sudo cp /dev/$sdcard backup.img

Then copy the bootloader:

  • sudo dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/$sdcard bs=1024 seek=8

In both case, $sdcard is to be replaced with the block device file of your SD card.

Banana PI M2 Berry

(Those are just notes at this point, added by LucasNussbaum)

  • You will need a UART (console) cable.

Installing Debian

Post-installation stuff

  • It might be a bit difficult to get the system to boot, because the installer does not set everything up correctly. You will need to install flash-kernel.
  • Ethernet does not work, because the device tree file for the device is incomplete. Add the data related to ethernet in the M2 ultra dts and recompile the dtd.
  • Wifi needs an additional firmware that is not shipped in the firmware-brcm80211 package (see https://bugs.debian.org/797779, that is not going to be fixed).

Resources

http://linux-sunxi.org/