Re: The state of Arm64 on Raspberry Pi (and its Documentation

[Florian La Roche <florian.laroche@googlemail.com>]

Hello deloptes,


Am Di., 31. März 2020 um 19:37 Uhr schrieb deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>:
>
> Pete Batard wrote:
> > Also please bear in mind that the Pi Foundation adds a lot of quirks to
> > their 32-bit kernels, some of which have yet to find their way in
> > mainline aarch64. Raspbian is a very custom as a kernel.
>
> Very interesting notes. I was planning to try debian kernel or custom kernel
> build on debian. What I tried recently is do raspbian network boot
> (diskless) and yesterday did debootstrap from within raspbian of a debian
> buster armhf. The supplied kernel did not work (of course), so I was going
> to look into that, but I am wondering now, after reading this, if I should
> take arm64 instead of armhf.
>
> For now I use the raspbian kernel in debian, but as you say it is 32 and I
> am not into the details, so thank you for the hints.
>
> Does it mean one should prefer arm64 and take a newer 5.x kernel?


I am using a 5.6.2 arm64 kernel without any GUI on a raspi3, works for me.

You can use the current Debian kernel and add also current
raspberry-pi-patches to
recompile the kernel. A script doing this is available here (also
works as native compile
as well as a cross-compile):
https://github.com/laroche/arm-devel-infrastructure/blob/master/vmdb2-debian/kernel5.sh

Compiled binary kernels (for armhf and arm64) can also be downloaded
for kernel 5.4.20, 5.4.28, 5.5.15, 5.6.2 from:
https://github.com/laroche/arm-devel-infrastructure/releases
I often try to also compile newer upstream releases, even if the
Debian kernel sources
are not yet rebased (mostly just disabling patches completely if I
don't need them).

Instead of using the Debian installer, I can also recommend to use
"vmdb2"  to create a
ready-to-use image. That can also be generated on any normal
amd64/x86_64-PC and does
not require a running arm64/armhf setup:
https://github.com/laroche/arm-devel-infrastructure/blob/master/vmdb2-debian/debian-rpi3-arm64.yaml

best regards,

Florian La Roche