How to install nixos in each SBC?

I was looking for resources on how to install nixos on librecomputer SBCs. After numerous trials i don’t get what i am doing wrong.
There are official guides on how to do it:
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM/Libre_Computer_ROC-RK3328-CC
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM/Libre_Computer_AML-S905X-CC-V2
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM/Raspberry_Pi

Moreover there is the official tool:

And this thread

Which would be the step by step to boot nixos?

I explain what i have done until now, i picked up the vanilla configuration.nix and installed uefi on graphical iso, installed uefi on minimal iso with 512MB /boot/efi fat32 (Grub and systemd-boot) and one single partition / in mbr (grub and standalone).

Hi, I installed nixos on alta aml-a311d using an image of nixos 23.11 in Hydra - Latest builds for job nixos:release-23.11:nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux.

Choose one which has been processed successfully. I expect it to work on the newest boards. Flash it to an SD and boot the SBC. The u-boot starts this one up based on extlinux configuration file in the fat32 partition.

2 Likes

Nix’s ARM64 images should work on all of our boards.

For boards like Le Potato and Tritium and Renegade without SPI firmware, just use libretech-flash-tool to flash the bootloader onto the image (or use dd with the bootloader file from boot.libre.computer/ci. It should work as long as it’s not GPT partitioning. If it is GPT partitioning, we recommend splitting the bootloader device and the GPT disk or converting it to MBR and updating any associated mounting targets like fstab and grub.cfg.

1 Like

Nixos seems to work in all boards but tritium.

Moreover right now I am trying to put kernel 6.7 on some boards and they freezer on boot up, i dont know exactly why.

Do you know what happens with Tritium? Any messages?

I just checked beacuase i lend renegade. Renegade and Tritium stay idle.

Tritum: Red light and no image through hdmi

Renegade: Red and green light and no hdmi output

In AML-311 works perfectly only 1/20 it does not recognices the sd card. On 905 no apparent problems.

Moreover, over the initial question, With Hydra - Latest builds for job nixos:release-23.11:nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux i can flash it on sd cards, but which is the same img for usb? i tried to flash it on usb and it didn’t work. This is the expected behaviour or it should work?

For AML-S905X-CC, it requires eMMC or SD card to boot. The bootloader must be flashed to either of these and not USB since there’s no onboard bootloader.

I’d be interested in some insight into this as well. In my experience this doesn’t seem to be sufficient for the roc-rk3328-cc. Using dd to flash the image and then using the flashing tool afterwards still causes the board to never boot (red LED, nothing else, no HDMI output or network activity, can’t figure out how else to troubleshoot). I’ve been spending days trying to figure out how to put NixOS on this thing.

I had it working ONCE and then a power outage caused the board to shut down, and it never came back. The board is fine, I got Debian running on it, but for whatever reason NixOS just won’t boot.

I know this is old, but ive been trying too, i got it to boot ONCE then it stopped working, no sound, no hdmi, no internet

I tried installing NixOS on SweetPotato and it didn’t work. I flashed USB drive, but when I try to boot it an error is shown.

=> usb tree 
USB device tree:
  1  Hub (5 Gb/s, 0mA)
  |  U-Boot XHCI Host Controller 
  |
  +-2  Mass Storage (480 Mb/s, 100mA)
  |    Kingston DataTraveler
  |  
  +-3  Hub (480 Mb/s, 100mA)
        USB2.0 Hub 
     
=> usbboot 2

Loading from usb device 0, partition 1: Name: usbda1  Type: U-Boot
"Error" handler, esr 0xbf000002
elr: 00000000010a0b00 lr : 000000000109c798 (reloc)
elr: 000000007df32b00 lr : 000000007df2e798
x0 : 0000000000000002 x1 : 0000000075eb6040
x2 : 0000000000000200 x3 : 0000000000000038
x4 : 0000000000000002 x5 : 0000000000000041
x6 : 0000000075eb3e70 x7 : 0000000000000000
x8 : 00000000000000ad x9 : 0000000075eb1ae0
x10: 0000000075eae870 x11: 00000000000000ad
x12: 0000000000000001 x13: 0000000000000000
x14: 0000000000000004 x15: 0000000000c0c0c0
x16: 00000000000000ac x17: 0000000000000000
x18: 0000000075e90da0 x19: 0000000075eb19b0
x20: 0000000075eb1a50 x21: 0000000000000001
x22: 00000000000000ac x23: 0000000000000002
x24: 000000007df3fe78 x25: 0000000075eaf2b0
x26: 0000000000000000 x27: 0000000000000000
x28: 0000000075eb6420 x29: 0000000075e86b10

Code: 9b050882 8b030004 d2800003 eb03005f (54000101) 
Resetting CPU ...

resetting ...
system cmd  1.


... skipped some rows


U-Boot 2023.07+ (May 15 2024 - 23:34:17 -0400) Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC-V2

Model: Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC V2
SoC:   Amlogic Meson GXL (S905X) Revision 21:d (84:2)
DRAM:  2 GiB

Generic sd card image worked, but I haven’t tried anything on it yet. Hydra - nixos:trunk-combined:nixos.sd_image.aarch64-linux