fedora-rpi4
This repository contains some notes on the usage of Fedora on the Raspberry Pi 4B+ computer
Simple UEFI installation of Fedora on the Raspberry Pi 4:
Assume all commands must be run as superuser. Some don't, but they will work fine with UID 0 anyway.
- Get the latest RPi4 UEFI firmware
- Format an SD card to hold the UEFI firmware:
At the shell:
fdisk /dev/sdN(where N is alphabetical index of the SD card in /dev/)
Enter the following commands (parentheticals are explanation)
> o (create dos partition table)
> n (new partition)
> p (primary)
> 1 (first)
> (leave blank, start at default of 2048)
> +512M (plenty of room for doing things)
(if it asks you if you want to remove a vfat signature or something, just do it. We will be formatting anyway)
> t (select partition 1)
> e (type 0e W95 FAT16 (LBA), use > L to see all if you're curious)
> a (toggle the bootable flag on partition 1
> w (write the changes to the disk)
And back at the shell:
mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdN1 (make that VFAT partition)- Mount the new partition and extract the UEFI bootloader onto it
Run the following comamnds:
mount /dev/sdN1 <mount_dir> # (mount dir can be any dir)
unzip RPi4_UEFI_Firmware_v1.20.zip -d <mount_dir>Note: I don't think it would be that complicated to put the UEFI firmware on the flash drive to create a single bootable image, perhaps by mounting a spin archive before flashing
- Get a Fedora Rawhide spin (because it has a relatively new kernel)
From somewhere in here
I recommend the minimal image because it is small.
Note: what are we missing in Fedora 32 and Linux < 5.7? For one, ACPI support of the genet Ethernet driver, which was added in the following patch:
commit 99c6b06a37d4cab118c45448fef9d28df62d35d8
Author: Jeremy Linton <jeremy.linton@arm.com>
Date: Mon Feb 24 16:54:01 2020 -0600
net: bcmgenet: Initial bcmgenet ACPI support
- Extract Fedora onto a flash drive that you are cool with wiping
Run the following command:
xzcat Fedora-Minimal-Rawhide-<some_numbers_idk>.aarch64.raw.xz | dd of=/dev/sdM status=progress bs=4M(where M is alphabetical index of the Flash drive in /dev/)
Note: I'm not sure how ideal the bs=4M argument is for USB drives.
I've seen it recommended for SD cards but I haven't looked into it
for this particular case.
- Boot Fedora via UEFI
Insert the SD card and flash drive into your RPi4, but not in the same hole.
If everything went right, you should see a white raspberry logo. When you do, hit escape on your keyboard (I should have mentioned it at the top, but you need a keyboard. A monitor might help too).
Select boot manager, and from there select the last option (I assume it will look something like USB device or storage device, but this may vary). If you see Linux boot a few seconds later, then you selected the right device. If you don't try a different device in the boot manager.
If nothing explodes, you should be greeted with the anaconda CLI interface. From here, use Fedora as you normally would. Install a GUI maybe, it's up to you. Things will probably be unstable since you're using Fedora Rawhide on a device not yet explicitly supported by the maintainers of Fedora ARM, but that's part of the fun.
Note: This process worked just fine for me on some old USB flash drive, but I ran out of space trying to compile the kernel since it only had 16 GB and the kernel is quite girthy. I bought two 64 GB USB devices, this product on amazon, and I was unable to boot Fedora Rawhide. At the time of this writing, it was a slightly older version, so I may try it again, but there also might be some kind of hardware issue. I don't really know what's going on, so if anyone reads this and has some clue, please let me know.