I have successfully installed Fedora 35 Server Edition on my Rock Pi 4a and everything is
running fine so far. In particular, with the current kernel, the PCIe NVMe disk is
usable. What a performance difference.
Now I want to boot from the NVMe Disk and therefore have to flash u-boot onto the SPI
(which was already soldered on my board by the maker).
I found instructions for the Pinebook Pro and Fedora [1], but accessing the SPI obviously
works differently on the Rock Pi. So I get no access to sf and in the Rock-pi directory
there is no file itbloader.spi as is in PineBookPro.
According to Radxa documentation [2] I need the tool rkdeveloptool, for which there is a
Fedora RPM. With this I could put the Rock Pi in maskrom mode and access the SPI.
Unfortunately, I could not find any information on how to install rsp. flash Fedora u-boot
with this tool. From what I've read, the order might be:
rkdeveloptool db /path/to/rk3399_loader_spinor_v1.15.114.bin
rkdeveloptool wl <BeginSec> /path/to/idbloader.xxx
rkdeveloptool wl <BeginSec> /path/to/u-boot.itb
rkdeveloptool rd
According to Rockchip Wiki [3], the image location for idbloader ist 0x40 sectors and
u-boot.itb 0x4000 sectors. But obviously there are different ways to generate those files
with probably different offsets, e.g. how it works vor Pine64 RockPro64 [4]. That one is
also supposed to be mainline u-boot (unlike the one provided by Radxa). It provides a file
combining idbloader and u-boot and starting with offset 0, quite comfortable. Does it
resemble Fedora u-boot (or vice versa)? Does it work on Radxa Rock Pi and Fedora?
And what about the file u-boot-rockchip.bin in Fedora?
Can anyone shed some light on this?
Any help greatly appreciated
Peter
[1]
https://nullr0ute.com/2021/05/fedora-on-the-pinebook-pro/
[2]
https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/dev/spi-install
[3]
http://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Boot_option
[4]
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8685