Create nixos rootfs for aarch64

Help
1

I want to install nixos into bananapi r64 with mt7622 soc and I cannot find any good tutorial/doc about building rootfs.

I already can build bootable sd card with u-boot & kernel from upstream and Debian stable as rootfs. Now I want to replace Debian with rootfs. What steps should I do to create nixos rootfs for aarch64?

1 Like
2

Does the generic aarch64 image boot? You probably have to flash your model specific uboot onto the sd card after flashing the generic image. https://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/trunk-combined/nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux/latest
You can build uboot easily too. NixOS on ARM - NixOS Wiki
Does the board require a specific kernel? You can use a 2nd sd card in case you need to compile natively on an existing arm linux.

3

No, unfortunately it does not boot. And I think that it is a bit hard to just flash custom u-boot to existing iso from Hydra - Build 160952654 of job nixos:trunk-combined:nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux since it has also specific first stage bootloader that should be placed in MBR partition with boot flag.

You can build uboot easily too.

Yes I know that I can build and u-boot, my question is not about building u-boot.

Does the board require a specific kernel?

Yes, it requires a bit specific kernel with patches that is not merged to upstream kernel repo. But I think that upstream kernel can boot just there will be issues with pci-e. But again, Iā€™m not asking about building kernel)

I will try to rephrase my question. I have prepared iso with first stage bootloader, correctly signed u-boot, boot partition and root parition. U-boot uses syslinux configs in boot partition to load kernel. Kernel with dtb and syslinux configs is placed in boot partition (lets say partition #2) mounted into /mnt/boot on host system. Kernel options in syslinux config tells to kernel use partition #3 as root file system and this partition mounted to the /mnt/root on host system. Host system is x86-64 NixOS and have binfmt_misc capability.

Can I install aarch64 NixOS into /mnt/root from such host system? And if I can what should I do?