HCL:Rock64

The Pine64 ROCK64 is a single-board computer.

Technical details

Rockchip RK3328 SoC
- 4x ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
- ARM Mali-450 MP2 GPU
1 / 2 / 4 GB LPDDR3 RAM
16 MB SPI flash
Micro SD card slot
eMMC module option
1 Gb Ethernet
1x USB 3.0 host, 2x USB 2.0 host
40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO

Installing openSUSE using an ISO

Some users reported a successful Tumbleweed installation from the (DVD or NET) installer ISO. The ISO has been written to a microSD card, and installation performed via serial console, to the internal eMMC. You may need to install dtb-rockchip package, depending on your pre-installed bootloader configuration.

You can follow instructions from HCL:AArch64_EFI

Writing a disk image to the SD card

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

Tumbleweed
JeOS image

If the direct links above do not work for you, please check the general download directory for the images.
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
```
Insert the SD card with the openSUSE image into your board.
Connect the board to your PC via serial port (optional, but helpful for debugging; USB-TTL serial cable needed).
Connect the board to your monitor (via DVI/HDMI, optional).
Power on the board.
Walk through the first boot steps.
Ethernet is configured to request an IP via DHCP, check your DHCP server for the board IP if used.
Have a lot of fun...

Default login is root:linux, works on serial console, via ssh, GUI.

Using proprietary TPL bootloader

openSUSE JeOS images are distributed with preinstalled bootloader. However, TPL (memory initialization) have appeared only in u-boot 2019.10, and some users report stability issues. Fortunately, proprietary Rockchip TPL may be easily reused instead of u-boot one if required. The bootloader consisted of opensource ITB image (available in u-boot-rock64-rk3328 package), opensource SPL image, and binary TPL image.

Install u-boot-tools package for your host architecture:
```
 zypper in u-boot-tools
```
Download and unpack u-boot-rock64-rk3328 package with precompiled bootloader:
```
 osc getbinaries hardware:boot u-boot:rock64-rk3328 openSUSE_Factory_ARM aarch64
 rpm2cpio binaries/u-boot-rock64-rk3328-2019.07-153.1.aarch64.rpm | cpio -id
```
A new directory ./boot containing bootloader binaries will be created in the current directory.

Download binary TPL binary:

 git clone https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkbin.git

Convert TPL binary into Rockchip image format:
```
 mkimage -n rk3328 -T rksd -d rkbin/bin/rk33/rk3328_ddr_333MHz_v1.16.bin idbloader.img
```
mkimage tool is available in u-boot-tools package in your host system.
Append SPL binary to the end of idbloader.img image:
```
 cat boot/u-boot-spl.bin >> idbloader.img
```
Use u-boot-spl.bin binary, not u-boot-spl.rksd.

Checklist

Now we have the following bootloader files ready to be deployed to SD card:

idbloader.img -- TPL/SPL image
boot/u-boot.itb - ITB image

Deploy bootloader

As root write the bootloader onto your SD card:

 dd if=idbloader.img of=/dev/sdX seek=64 conv=notrunc
 dd if=boot/u-boot.itb of=/dev/sdX seek=16384 conv=notrunc
 sync