Slackware On Odroid U3

Slackware 14.2 On Odroid U3

3+ partition method

In 3 partition method, installer root , like from the initrd image, is installed onto second par tion, and booted to install the distribution to a third partition. You may refer to multiboot document ( [1] ) to do a two partition method of installation. It is a bit more complicated than three partition method. This method can further be simplified to do installation into a single partition, provided a suitable u-boot firmware is fused.

See the multiboot page at github [2] for a two partition method.

Ref:

1. [3]

Requirements

16/32 GB Micro SD card

You may also install on to a pen drive or external hard disk for usb and boot from there. But you still will require a micro sd card for booting.

A working Ubuntu image like ubuntu-16.04.1.lts

[4]

Slackware 14.2 for arm

[5]

rsync --exclude '*/source/*' --exclude '*/testing/*' -Pavv --delete ftp.arm.slackware.com::slackwarearm/slackwarearm-14.2.

Installation

Install the u-boot header and FAT partiotion for zIamge, uInitrd and boot.ini

unxz ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img.xz xzcat --verbose ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdX count=300000

Create partitions on SD card

fdisk /dev/sdX

From partition created by dd from img in step 1, delete second and add three more ( or as many desired ).

First partion created from the image has size of ~128MB. Make this partition bootable ( Boot flag on ), if not already so. Size of second partion should hold the installer initrd ( uncompressed ) and also the distribution (slackware) for installation, something like 4GB. Third partition is where the distributions are installed. Size in the order of 24GB or so. Fourth is the swap partion - 2GB or so.

       Device         Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
       /dev/sdX1 *        6144   268287   262144  128M  6 FAT16
       /dev/sdX2        268288  8656895  8388608    4G 83 Linux
       /dev/sdX3       8656896 58988543 50331648   24G 83 Linux
       /dev/sdX4      58988544 62945279  3956736  1.9G 82 Linux swap

Mount partition two, install 14.2 setup initrd image, copy kernel modules, firmware and installation sources.

From PC host / Odroid running other Linux

<source> mkdir odroid cd ordoid mkdir boot mkdir root mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX2 tune2fs /dev/sdX2 -L installer mount /dev/sdX2 boot

1. copy / download distribution files, say slackwarearm-14.2 to boot/

wget http://www.arm.slackware.com/slackwarearm/slackwarearm-14.2/isolinux/initrd-armv7.img

or

mkdir boot/slackwarearm-14.2 cd boot/slackwarearm-14.2

For downloading: Refer to http://arm.slackware.com and also consider donations. cd slackwarearm-14.2 rsync --exclude '*/source/*' --exclude '*/testing/*' -Pavv --delete ftp.arm.slackware.com::slackwarearm/slackwarearm-14.2 . cd ../..

cd boot gzip -dc ../slackwarearm-14.2/isolinux/initrd-armv7.img | cpio -i --make-directories sync cd lib rm -rf modules/* rm -rf firmware/*

1. mount and copy from Ubuntu.

</source>

Install ubuntu on third partition, copy module and firmware files to installer partition.

<source> mkdir ubuntu

if you have the image installed onto an sd card, use the second partition from there.

mount -r /dev/sdY2 ubuntu

               or

if you only have the image ( first unxz ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img.xz ) parted -s ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img unit B print find partition 2 start offset from the output. p2offset=.... mount second partition from ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img - mount -o loop,ro,offset=$p2offset ubuntu-16.04-mate-odroid-u2u3-20160920.img ubuntu

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX3 tune2fs /dev/sdX3 -L slackware14.2 mount /dev/sdX3 root mkdir root/ubuntu-16.04.1.lts mkdir root/installer mkdir root/slackware-14.2 (cd ubuntu; tar cfz - *) | (cd root/ubuntu-16.04.1.lts; tar xfz - ) copy modules and firmware? to installer. (cd root/ubuntu-16.04.1.lts/lib/ ; tar cfz - modules firmware ) | (cd boot/lib/; tar xfz - ) sync sync umount ubuntu umount boot umount root

</source>

Reboot odroid, and if everything goes fine, will boot into slackware installer.

press enter to login as root run setup:

                       setup

During installation, Choose partition 3 as target, and dont' format it. It already has Ubuntu on it. Choose source directory for installation - /slackwarearm-14.2/slackware Proceed with the normal slackware installation.

Modify boot.ini and reboot.

<source> mount /dev/sdX1 boot edit and modify boot/boot.ini to boot from parition 3 setenv bootargs "console=tty1 console=ttySAC1,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootwa it ro mem=2047M ${videoconfig}" sync umount boot </source>

If you are planning for multiboot

<source> cd root mv * slackware-14.2 mv slackware-14.2/ubuntu-16.04.1.lts . Now you have both Slackware and Ubuntu on same partition. See README.odroid.u3.multiboot to see how to get a multiboot setup ( choo se distribution at boot time ) so that you can choose the distribution at boot time. No fancy chooser this time, you need to enter the number corresponding to the distro at a prompt.

Other info

Mouse pointer issue.

       Xorg ( with blackbox wm ) seems have no mouse curser until you open an xterm or s

o by clicking the right mouse button. Mouse pointer is okay if you have an .xinitrc that starts an xterm or so.

No web browsers.

Browsers you can compile and run on odroid u3, slackware 14.2: sadly none of these browsers are available in the distribution. text based ones like lynx are there. Emacs supports web browsing mode too.

               Dillo version 3.0.5  ( fast , but premitive ) first step
               Mozilla Firefox 50.0 ( compile from source, took long time like more than
6 hours)

[6]

= No libreoffice.

       Office compilation - fail
               Libreoffice libreoffice-5.2.2.2 compiled, ( took very long time, 12 ho

urs or more ) starts, but fall into libreoffice docuement discovery mode and fail (repeat):

(soffice:1091): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: :1:59: 'min-width' is not a va lid property name

(soffice:1091): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: :1:76: 'min-height' is not a v alid property name

Shutdown seems not shutdown/poweroff complete, but keeps printing message, should not hav e reached here.

But no other issues on reboot after shutdown. This gets fixed with [7] [8]