Orange Pi

Orange Pi (One) is a minimalist computer built for the ARMv7-A architecture. More information about this project.

Note: The device is not officially supported by the ALARM project, i.e. please refrain from submitting patches, feature requests or bug reports for it.

This article is strongly based on Banana Pi. Moreover this article is not meant to be an exhaustive setup guide and assumes that the reader has setup an Arch system before.

Installation

Prerequisites

build-essentials and other common compiling packages (see aur). For compiling boot script with mkimage uboot-tools and for bootloader compilation arm-none-eabi-gcc

Using original ArchLinuxARM tarball

This method will install unmodified ArchLinuxARM armv7 basesystem to your Orange Pi One, meaning you will have the latest mainline kernel running. It will probably also work on other H3 Orange Pis with mainline support.

Install basesystem to a SD card

Zero the beginning of the SD card:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=8

Use fdisk to partition the SD card, and format it with mkfs.ext4 -O '^metadata_csum,^64bit' /dev/sdX1.

Mount the ext4 filesystem, replacing sdX1 with the formatted partition:

# mkdir mnt
# mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt

Download and extract the root filesystem:

# wget https://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz
# bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-armv7-latest.tar.gz -C /mnt/

Create a file with the following boot script

boot.cmd

part uuid ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} uuid
setenv bootargs console=${console} root=PARTUUID=${uuid} rw rootwait

if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${kernel_addr_r} /boot/zImage; then
  if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${fdt_addr_r} /boot/dtbs/${fdtfile}; then
    if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${ramdisk_addr_r} /boot/initramfs-linux.img; then
      bootz ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr_r};
    else
      bootz ${kernel_addr_r} - ${fdt_addr_r};
    fi;
  fi;
fi

if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} 0x48000000 /boot/uImage; then
  if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} 0x43000000 /boot/script.bin; then
    setenv bootm_boot_mode sec;
    bootm 0x48000000;
  fi;
fi

Compile it and write it to the SD-card using the package uboot-tools

# mkimage -A arm -O linux -T script -C none -a 0 -e 0 -n "Orange Pi One boot script" -d boot.cmd /mnt/boot/boot.scr
# umount /mnt

Compile and copy U-Boot bootloader

The next step is creating a u-boot image. Make sure you have arm-none-eabi-gcc, dtc, git, swig and uboot-tools installed on your system. If you compile for a different H3 Orange Pi than the One, replace orangepi_one_config accordingly. Then clone the u-boot source code and compile a Orange Pi image:

$ git clone https://gitlab.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot.git
$ cd u-boot
$ git checkout tags/v2020.04
$ make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- orangepi_one_defconfig
$ make -j4 ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi-

If everything went fine you should have an U-Boot image: u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. Now dd the image to your sdcard, where /dev/sdX is your sdcard.

# dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8

Using U-Boot precompiled binaries

If you could not compile them on your AMD64 machine, just grab them at: https://gitlab.com/vinibali/orangepi_uboot

Use the same command for placing it to the sdcard:

# dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 seek=8

Login / SSH

SSH login for root is disabled by default. Login with the default user account and use su.

Type	Username	Password
Root	root	root
User	alarm	alarm

Additional step, Wi-Fi Drivers

RTL8189ES/ETV

This driver will require to Orange Pi Plus / Plus 2.

First, Install the kernel headers. Install base-devel git linux-armv7-headers Then, build out-of-tree driver.

Note: Replace KSRC to your own kernel version.

# git clone https://github.com/jwrdegoede/rtl8189ES_linux.git
# cd rtl8189ES_linux
# make -j4 ARCH=arm KSRC=/usr/lib/modules/4.18.11-1-ARCH/build/ 

And install manually.

Note: Replace modules directory to your own kernel version.

# cp 8189es.ko /usr/lib/modules/4.18.11-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/realtek/
# depmod -a
# modprobe 8189es

Xradio XR819

This hardware will require the out of tree xradio-git^AUR kernel driver for Orange Pi Zero.

# pacaur -S xradio-git

Version 5.3.1-1-ARCH is working fine, but if you could not find the wlan0 device on the interfaces list,

you will need to burn the 201907 u-boot loader and copy the dtb file to /boot/dtbs as well from: https://gitlab.com/vinibali/orangepi_uboot.

# wget https://gitlab.com/vinibali/orangepi_uboot/-/archive/master/orangepi_uboot-master.zip
# unzip -q
# dd if=orangepi_uboot-master/201907/orangepi_zero/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 seek=8
# cp orangepi_uboot-master/201907/dtb/sun8i-h2-plus-orangepi-zero.dtb /boot/dtbs

Orange Pi PC2

Allwinner H5 @ 1.20Ghz 64bit system AArch64

General information about the device

Note: The device is also not officially supported by the ALARM project

Follow general installation instruction above. Differences:

UBoot

Make sure that aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc is additionally installed on your system.

# git clone https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware.git
# git clone https://gitlab.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot.git
# cd arm-trusted-firmware
# make CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- PLAT=sun50i_a64 DEBUG=1 -j4 bl31
# cp build/sun50i_a64/debug/bl31.bin ../u-boot/
# cd ../u-boot
# git checkout tags/v2020.04
# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- -j4 orangepi_pc2_defconfig
# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- -j4
# dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=8k seek=1

Install basesystem to a SD card

For AARCH64 you will need another rootfs

# wget https://archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz
# bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C mnt/

change the /mnt/boot/boot.cmd to

boot.cmd

part uuid ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} uuid
setenv bootargs console=${console} root=PARTUUID=${uuid} rw rootwait

if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${kernel_addr_r} /boot/Image; then
  if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${fdt_addr_r} /boot/dtbs/${fdtfile}; then
    if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${bootpart} ${ramdisk_addr_r} /boot/initramfs-linux.img; then
      booti ${kernel_addr_r} ${ramdisk_addr_r}:${filesize} ${fdt_addr_r};
    else
      booti ${kernel_addr_r} - ${fdt_addr_r};
    fi;
  fi;
fi

make image the /mnt/boot/boot.scr to

# mkimage -C none -A arm64 -T script -d /mnt/boot/boot.cmd /mnt/boot/boot.scr

See also

• "Just another Geek's" blog about installing Linux
• "ArchLinux ARM on Orange Pi One"^{[dead link 2021-11-15 ⓘ]}