HCL:AArch64 EFI

This page applies to any AArch64 (armv8) platform with a standard UEFI boot environment.

openSUSE Leap

Installing openSUSE Leap with an installer (ISO)

This method does not work on all systems. It works successfully on QEMU with OVMF. Real hardware may or may not implement all bits necessary for ISO boot. You can check if your system is SystemReady compliant. If ISO boot does not work, use the image-based approach.

Leap-15.5

openSUSE Leap 15.5 AArch64 DVD openSUSE Leap 15.5 AArch64 NET Install

• Burn the ISO image on a DVD or dd it on a USB stick.
• Plug the DVD or the USB stick into your system.
• Connect to the serial port (if any)
• Connect a monitor, mouse, and keyboard (if any)
• Power on the system.
• Walk through the installation.
• Have a lot of fun...

Installing the openSUSE Leap Image (direct disk access)

Leap-15.5

JeOS image E20 image XFCE image LXQT image GNOME image KDE image X11 image

If the direct links above do not work for you, please check the general download directory for the images.

openSUSE Tumbleweed

Installing openSUSE Tumbleweed with an installer (ISO)

This method does not work on all systems. It works successfully on QEMU with OVMF. Real hardware may or may not implement all bits necessary for ISO boot. You can check if your system is SystemReady compliant. If ISO boot does not work, use the image based approach.

Tumbleweed

openSUSE Tumbleweed AArch64 DVD openSUSE Tumbleweed AArch64 NET install

• Burn the ISO image on a DVD or dd it on a USB stick.
• Plug the DVD or the USB stick into your system.
• Connect to the serial port (if any)
• Connect a monitor and a keyboard (if any)
• Power on the system.
• Walk through the installation.
• Have a lot of fun...

Installing the openSUSE Tumbleweed Image (direct disk access)

• Choose a Tumbleweed image (xz compressed tar archive) between JeOS, E20, GNOME, LXQT, X11, or XFCE and download it:

Tumbleweed

JeOS image E20 image GNOME image KDE image LXQT image X11 image XFCE image

• Extract the tar archive you just downloaded
• Extract the openSUSE-*raw.xz file from the tar archive onto the disk attached to your system WARNING all previous data on the hard disk will be lost.

   xzcat [image].raw.xz | dd bs=4M of=/dev/[sdX] oflag=sync

• Replace [sdX] above with the actual hard disk you intend to write over
• Connect to the serial port (if any)
• Connect a monitor and a keyboard (if any)
• Power on the system.
• Walk through the first boot steps.
• Default root password is "linux".
• Have a lot of fun...

Installing the openSUSE Tumbleweed Image (PXE deployment)

On your server

• Download the JeOS Tumbleweed image (xz compressed tar archive) from:

Tumbleweed

JeOS image

• Extract the tar archive you just downloaded
• Copy initrd*gz to /srv/tftpboot/aarch64/boot/initrd
• Copy initrd*kernel* to /srv/tftpboot/aarch64/boot/linux
• Copy openSUSE*.xz and openSUSE*.md5 to /srv/ftp/image/
• Write the following section into /srv/tftpboot/aarch64/configs/""your board's mac address""

  menuentry 'openSUSE-Tumbleweed-AArch64' {
    echo 'Setting append...'
    set append='plymouth.enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200n8 loader=grub2 pxe=1 kiwiserver=<your servers ip address> kiwiservertype=ftp'
    echo 'Done!'
    echo 'Loading kernel...'
    linux aarch64/boot/linux $append
    echo 'Done!'
    echo 'Loading initrd...'
    initrd aarch64/boot/initrd
    echo 'Done!'
  }

• Write the following section into /srv/tftpboot/aarch64/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

mac="aarch64/configs/$net_default_mac"
default="aarch64/configs/default"

configfile $mac

#is the configfile loading? when not load default!
if [ default_config_found -ne 1 ];then
	configfile $default
fi

• Create a working grub2 EFI binary and copy it into /srv/tftpboot/aarch64/grub.efi

  $ grub2-mkimage -O arm64-efi -o grub.efi -p /aarch64/boot/grub2 `ls /usr/lib/grub2/arm64-efi/*.mod | cut -d . -f 1`

• Change your DHCP configuration to point its "filename" property to the grub.efi binary

    filename "aarch64/grub.efi";

On your machine

1. Power it up
2. Configure the system to boot from PXE
3. Walk through the installation steps.
4. Have a lot of fun...

This image is based on the very latest unstable kernel. Try it if you suspect kernel problems.

Tumbleweed

JeOS image

If the direct links above do not work for you, please check the general download directory for the images.