NixOS on ARM/ODROID-HC1

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Hardkernel ODROID-HC1 & ODROID-HC2
Manufacturer Hardkernel
Architecture ARMv7
Bootloader U-Boot
Boot options SD

Status

Mostly working, but some manual steps needed to get it running.

Board-specific installation notes

  1. Flash the multiplatform ARMv7 SD card image onto a Micro SD card.
  2. Install the ODROID XU3 bootloader:
    • If you can run ARMv7 binaries (either natively or with QEMU), you can use nix-shell -p odroid-xu3-bootloader --run 'sd_fuse-xu3 /dev/mmcblkp0' (replace mmcblkp0 with the device node for your SD card).
    • If you are cross compiling, the script will not run as it'll try to use ARMv7 binaries, but you can manually flash the needed parts: 
          dd conv=notrunc bs=512 seek=1    of=/dev/mmcblk0 if=./result/lib/sd_fuse-xu3/bl1.bin.hardkernel
    dd conv=notrunc bs=512 seek=31   of=/dev/mmcblk0 if=./result/lib/sd_fuse-xu3/bl2.bin.hardkernel.1mb_uboot
    dd conv=notrunc bs=512 seek=63   of=/dev/mmcblk0 if=./result/lib/sd_fuse-xu3/u-boot-dtb.bin
    dd conv=notrunc bs=512 seek=2111 of=/dev/mmcblk0 if=./result/lib/sd_fuse-xu3/tzsw.bin.hardkernel
  3. If you cross compiled the boot loader, U-Boot will try to load an incorrect device tree blob. The easiest way to fix that is to mount the root partition (the second partition on the SD card), and modify boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to include FDT exynos5422-odroidhc1.dtb (the HC1 and HC2 both use the same DTB file, there is no exynos5422-odroidhc2.dtb). This will be needed every time the configuration is regenerated, so it is best to reinstall the bootloader natively once the system has booted for the first time.

The system is now ready to boot. SSH is disabled, so you'll need to access it via the serial port. As the image is based off of the NixOS installer you should be automatically logged into the nixos account and both nixos and root should have no password set.

Known Problems

Hardkernel Kernel

You can use the Hardkernel fork of the Linux kernel by setting boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_hardkernel_latest. Note that this is currently a 4.14 LTS kernel.

This kernel does not reboot correctly with the default settings. To work around this you can set boot.consoleLogLevel = 7;. Powering the system off and then unplugging the power supply shortly to make it start up again also works.

Mainline Kernel

The mainline kernel also doesn't reboot correctly, but works fine when booted from a cold system. When doing a warm reboot the SATA port will not work and the ethernet port might also be unusable.

Ethernet, SATA in stage1

To use the SATA disk in stage1, for example to move the Nix store off of the Micro SD card, add boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "uas" ];.

To use a network connection, for example for remotely unlocking an encrypted root partition, add this to your configuration: 

boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ "r8152" ];
boot.initrd.preLVMCommands = lib.mkBefore "waitDevice /sys/class/net/eth0";
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