HCL:CubieBoard

CubieBoard

The CubieBoard is a small Allwinner A10 based device. It has a very competitive price point and is therefore similar to the Raspberry Pi, however a lot more powerfu.

Technical Data

• 1GHz ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache
• Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
• 1GB DDR3 @480MHz
• HDMI 1080p Output
• 10/100M Ethernet
• 4GB Nand Flash
• 2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 IR
• 96 header pins including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP..

Installing the openSUSE Tumbleweed image

1. Download the image you want (Leap is stable, Tumbleweed is rolling) from here:
   

   Version: Tumbleweed

   JeOS image E20 image XFCE image LXQT image X11 image

   If the direct links above do not work for you (as we are constantly building new images), please check the general download directory for the images.
2. As root extract the image onto your SD card (replace sdX with the device name of your SD card).
   WARNING: all previous data on the SD card will be lost. Check first if the device you have selected is really your SD card!

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

Alternatively can download Etcher, an open source tool to flash your image graphically.

3. Insert the SD card with the openSUSE image into your board.
4. Connect the board to your PC via serial port (optional, but helpful for debugging; USB-TTL serial cable needed).
5. Connect the board to your monitor (via DVI/HDMI, optional).
6. Power on the board.
7. Ethernet is configured to request an IP via DHCP, check your DHCP server for the board IP if used.
8. Have a lot of fun...

Installing the openSUSE 13.2 Image

Boot images are here: http://download.opensuse.org/ports/armv7hl/distribution/13.2/appliances/ However,

A functional install image has been contributed and can be downloaded from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/ARM:/13.2:/Contrib:/Allwinner/images/ Only the cubieboard image was tested, the cubieboard2, cubietruck images are untested. The project is this: https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/devel:ARM:13.2:Contrib:Allwinner
These changes were made to 13.2 final:

• Updated boot loader
• Updated device description
• Kernel updated to factory, currently 4.0.0. The 13.2 kernel 3.16 does not seem to boot on the cubieboard. Note, this means kernel security updates will not be available!
• Updated dracut to factory. This may not be necessary, if it's a problem, downgrade to the 13.2 dracut, create a new initrd, and test whether that still boots.

Modifying the install image itself: The 13.2 installation image contains a broken boot loader and kernel. Transplanting those from a factory image gives a booting and functional system. Here is a script to transplant a factory boot loader and kernel into a 13.2 boot image. (It also needs mount-img-partitions, functions_vk.bash from the same place.) Over time versions of the installation images and kernel versions in the script will probably need to be adjusted.

Installing the openSUSE 12.3 Image

The openSUSE image currently uses a Linux 3.4 based downstream kernel. There is work in progress to have patches in vanilla tree, and once we have an image based we'll switch to that one.

1. Download the latest image at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/ARM:/12.3:/Contrib:/sunxi/images/ and choose between:
   1. JeOS image for a minimal system openSUSE-12.3-ARM-JeOS-cubieboard-*.raw.xz or
   2. XFCE image for a graphical system openSUSE-12.3-ARM-XFCE-cubieboard-*.raw.xz
2. As root extract the image onto your SD-Card (replace sdX with the device name of your SD-Card). WARNING: all previous data on the SD-Card will be lost.

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

3. Insert the SD-Card with the openSUSE image into your CubieBoard.
4. Connect the CubieBoard to your PC via serial port.
5. Connect the CubieBoard to your monitor via DVI or HDMI. (optional)
6. Power on the CubieBoard.
7. Walk through the first boot steps on the serial console.
8. Have a lot of fun...