Bug 1221316

Summary: Add support for Nanopc-T6
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE Distribution Reporter: Aaron Williams <aaron.w2>
Component: BootloaderAssignee: Torsten Duwe <duwe>
Status: IN_PROGRESS --- QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Enhancement    
Priority: P5 - None CC: duwe
Version: Leap 15.5   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: aarch64   
OS: openSUSE Leap 15.5   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Aaron Williams 2024-03-12 21:20:52 UTC 
It would be nice if it were possible to boot and install OpenSUSE on the FriendlyElec NanoPC-T6 box. It's based around a Rockchip RK3588 so it shouldn't be all that different from other Rockchip boards.

Some details on the board can be found at: https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPC-T6

https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=292

I have a 16GiB model.

I could also examine the process if there are instructions somewhere on how OpenSUSE images are built for other RockCHIP devices.
Comment 1 Aaron Williams 2024-03-12 21:25:24 UTC 
The NanoPC-T4 is already supported and is similar.
Comment 2 Torsten Duwe 2024-03-18 12:28:01 UTC 
(In reply to Aaron Williams from comment #1)
> The NanoPC-T4 is already supported and is similar.

the T4 is based on the RK3399 SoC, which is different to some respect.

For me, installation of 15.6 failed, see boo#1221603; TW runs, once installed.
IOW: Work in progress.

For a start, you could prepare your SPI flash with the latest U-Boot (2024.04).
(Note that for full functionality, that might require binary blobs.)
Comment 3 Aaron Williams 2024-03-19 04:17:19 UTC 
I would build my own kernel image if I knew how.  I work on a different ARM SoC (Marvell CN10K), but the boot method is somewhat different, and I'm not sure how OpenSUSE ARM kernel images are set up and built. On that SoC I have the root filesystem EXT4 image on the eMMC device and use tftp to load a kernel into U-Boot and use the booti command to boot it, but this is also a buildroot setup.
Comment 4 Torsten Duwe 2024-03-22 17:27:18 UTC 
There's no need to build your own kernel. U-Boot is the only remaining problem.
In short: build an rk3588 u-boot-rockchip-spi.bin according to
https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/blob/master/doc/board/rockchip/rockchip.rst
and get that into the SPI NOR flash. I'll try to automate both steps, but especially the latter will take a while.