NixOS on Rock64Pro

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Hi @Boondocks8194, no worries. We all have other things to do.

It has been a while since I flashed Tow-Boot, so I hope I’m not forgetting anything here. But this is rougly how it should work:

  • Clone the Tow-Boot repo, checkout the released branch to get the latest stable release
  • Build Tow-Boot via nix-build -A pine64-rockpro64 (the repo doesn’t have a flake). The build should be reasonably fast, as it is automatically using cross-compilation.
  • Flash spi.installer.img to an SD card
  • Boot RockPro64 from that SD card and follow the instructions on the serial console. I don’t remember the details here, but it should be straightforward. It might even support HDMI output and USB keyboard input, but if IIRC keyboard input was flaky.

After this, the RockPro64 should automatically boot from the SPI flash. If it doesn’t work, you might have to jumper two GPIO pins to force it to boot from the SD card again, see the Pine64 wiki.

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