Category Archives: Cubieboard2

Qemu for Arch Linux ARM

Own compilation of Qemu for Arch Linux ARM, as it’s still in official repository (I need to verify the Yaourt repository). At the moment I desactivated Spice support Spice(On english Wikipedia), that allow to graphically control desktop of the Virtual Machine. That’s still possible to access to console.

Now obsolete, prefer official package.

This package is on my repository, you need to install these packages (there are other dependencies that can be found on official Arch Linux ARM repositories) :

* libseccomp-2.2.3-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz
* iasl-20150408-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz
* leveldb-1.18-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

You also need the SeaBIOS « any » (architecture independant) package, that can be found here:
* https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/seabios/. Click to Download From Mirror in the right box.

I made a locale copy of this package in case of need:
* seabios-1.8.2-1-any.pkg.tar.xz

And finally you also need the Qemu package itself:
* qemu-2.3.0-3-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

To install them after that, in root account (or with sudo):

pacman -U libseccomp-2.2.3-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz iasl-20150408-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz \
  leveldb-1.18-1.1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz seabios-1.8.2-1-any.pkg.tar.xz \
  qemu-2.3.0-3-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz

That’s not optimized for 3rd generation Cortex-A (Cortex-A7/a15/a17), The works then on any Cortex-A architecture, not only on the Cubieboard2.

I hope to have soon a smartbook based on Rockchip RK3288 for further experiment. Several vendors build 11″ models with about 10 hours autonomy they sell for 150 to 250$ depending on configuration (2 to 4 GB of RAM 16 or 32GB SSD). They are powerfull enough for web, terminal, office work) and several Linux distributions (including Arch Linux ARM, Debian and Ubuntu, can be installed on it):
* Asus (C201 11.6″ Chromebook and Chromebook Flip C100P (10″), this one can be used as a tablet too)
* Haier Chromebook C11
* Hisense Chromebook C11
* CTL H4 Chromebook for education

Due to succes of this plateform, MediaTek, made a similar solution based on MT8173, 64-bits, big.LITTLE, Quad-core.

Linux 4.0 (4.1 on june 25) kernel on Allwinner A20/Cubieboard2

Thanks to the hardware and software development work of AllWinner, to the Linux mainlining effort of the Linux-sunxi community to improve and push driver into main line Linux kernel sources and to the integration work of ArchLinux and ArchLinuxARM communities, the Cubieboard2 (using Allwinner A20 SoC) since this night officially use 4.0 kernel as default with ArchlinuxARM. Before this date an old Linux kernel 3.x branch was used.

* Linux XXX 4.0.5-2-ARCH #1 SMP Fri Jun 12 20:03:44 MDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

This means that :
* Lots of NAND flash can be used for system
* CPU frequency is well managed now
* Most of driver are integrated and probably really stable.

25 june update, 11 days after the 4.0 : A new update occured today with linux kernel 4.1
* Linux XXX 4.1.0-1-ARCH #1 SMP Tue Jun 23 23:24:14 MDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux).

Inkscape0.91pre (and archLinuxARM test)

After a fist test of Inkscape 0.91pre, due to the number of changes, and improvement of reactivity, to resolved bugs, better multithread (with OpenMP), etc… I wanted to try it on my Cubieboard2, where it was usable for basic function, but a little slow for some advanced fucntions (like calligraphic tool).

I then compiled it on ArchlinuxARM to test it on my Cubieboard2, I put the paquet in mon micro-reprository ArchlinuxARM, because I still didn’t understand the process to submit it in yaourthouse of AUR (Arch User Repository) or inArchlinuxARM repository.

So then… that’s really fast. This uses both 2 Cortex-A7 CPU (need to be tested on quadcore far faster Cortex-A17 architectures like Rockchip RK3288 like Rikomagic MK802II LE (for Linux Edition), see demo) :). That’s now fully usable, blurs are still slow to draw, but display is relatively asyncrone.

For information, my video is recorded on a x86_64 with application remote display, using X11/tcp (via 100 Mb switch ), this explain some slowness and time shift in display.

Two ArchlinuxARM applications

* Entangle is a realtime DSLR camera remote control, based on gphoto2 I already wrote about 3 years ago.
* Bochs, an x86 emulator, that allows to use x86 system on a window, on ARM :D.

I only recompiled package from the ArchLinux (x86) PKGBUILD files, using makepkg -a and installing missing dependencies with pacman.

You can find my ArchlinuARM compiled packages here, I will try to understand the process to integrate them in ArchlinuxARM AUR.

I put them in my Cubieboard directory, but there should work fine for any ARMv7h plateform where ArchLinuxARM runs :

/cubieboard/ArchlinuxARM/

To install a package from filesystem : pacman -U name_of_the_package.pkg.tar.xz