Re: Fresh Trixie install on VisionFive 2
Hi,
On 2025-03-10 12:13, Jakob Oestergaard Hegelund wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> Having used the StarFive provided debian image for a while on my
> VisionFive 2, I wanted to forge ahead and install a "proper" Debian from
> scratch using the Trixie installer.
>
> (If this is the wrong list for this question please accept my apologies
> in advance - it is my impression that this is very riscv specific
> though)
>
> What I ended up doing was getting the latest weekly Trixie netinst image
> and writing that to an USB stick.
>
> I then boot my VF2 into U-Boot (and have a serial console attached).
>
> I start up the USB subsystem with "usb start"
>
> I load the EFI image as well as the DTB and boot using EFI:
>
> fatload usb 0:2 0x40200000 efi/boot/bootriscv64.efi
> fatload usb 0:2 0x46000000 /dtb/starfive/jh7110-starfive-visionfive-2-v1.3b.dtb
> bootefi 0x40200000 0x46000000
You should probably use ${kernel_addr_r} and ${fdt_addr_r} instead of
hardcoded addresses, but that is very unlikely related to your issue.
The same way you can use dtb/${fdtfile} for the DTB file. Again that's
not your issue, and it's probably better to write it like that for
documentation purposes.
> This successfully loads up the Debian Trixie GRUB and I get presented
> with the installation options - so far so good(!)
>
> Any attempt to boot the installer kernel results in:
> "relocation overflow"
> from GRUB.
I am not sure what is the issue, but I could be linked to the u-boot
version installed on the board. I got my boards quite some time ago, and
I tested various u-boot versions and dip switches setting, I am not sure
what is the initial setting. Also I guess depending on the batch, there
are boards with different version of u-boot.
You might want to try updating u-boot using the version provided by the
u-boot-starfive package. You might want to start putting U-Boot on a
sdcard if you fear updating the SPI flash. You have some documentation
available upstream for that (just you only need to install u-boot.itb
and uboot-spl.bin.normal.out:
https://docs.u-boot.org/en/latest/board/starfive/visionfive2.html
If that works for you, I wonder if we should provide the latest u-boot
version on the installation media, and provide the instructions in the
installation manual. In that case do not hesitate to keep track of what
you have done, it could be useful to write the official documentation.
Regards
Aurelien
--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aurelien@aurel32.net http://aurel32.net
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