Redsleeve build on a Cubieboard 2.

It should work equally as well on a Cubietruck, and may work on any of the Allwinner A20
 boards listed in the /uboot/boards directory.

Note that Cubieboard lacks a battery backed up RTC and that impacts booting until NTP updates the system time.
  Also there is no EEprom, so the MAC addr is local scope derived from the SID.

I did this install on an 8Gb SDcard.  It is easy to install on a larger card and expand the rootfs partition.

An HDD or SSD install is provided at the end.

This install will be using the RSEL6 build from:

http://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.redsleeve.org/pub/yum/os/rsel6-rootfs-gui-20130927-1.tar.xz

The instructions will include every step, but at some points I will be providing tar files 
or the compressed image to start at that point.  All these tar files and compressed images are available at:

http://cdn.opensxce.org/redsleeve/el6/cubieboard2/

You will need a Cubieboard 2 (or other Allwinner A20 board), at least an 8Gb SDcard for booting
 (actual size of 7950Mb, check with 'parted /dev/sd? print').  A TTL serial USB connection to the
 serial console is also nice, but should not be necessary.  I use 

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

to access the serial console.


First make an F19 card; boot and build tarballs

F19 installation instructions are at:

http://docs.cubieboard.org/tutorials/cb2/installation/cb2_fedora_19_card_install

Then make the following 3 tarballs:

tar -cJf f19-uboot.tar.xz -C  /boot .
tar -cJf f19-firmware.tar.xz -C  /lib/firmware .
tar -cJf f19-modules.tar.xz -C  /lib/modules .

Or if you wish, you can skip the F19 build and start here with the tarballs.

Build blank 8Gb SDcard

As root (or sudo), use some method to delete existing partitions (first umount them!) like:

parted /dev/sdb rm 1
etc.  

Then create the needed partitions:

parted /dev/sdb mklabel msdos
parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext3 4 516
parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary linux-swap 516 1540
parted /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 1540 7950        /*  <- It CAN be smaller
mke2fs -t ext3 -L uboot /dev/sdb1
mkswap /dev/sdb2
mke2fs -t ext4 -L rootfs /dev/sdb3

Remove and reinsert card to mount uboot and rootfs partitions.  Let's assume they get mounted under

/run/media/me/  and the tarballs are at /home/me/

tar -C /run/media/me/rootfs/ -Jxvf /home/me/rsel6-rootfs-gui-20130927-1.tar.xz
tar -C /run/media/me/rootfs/lib/modules -Jxvf /home/me/f19-modules.tar.xz
tar -C /run/media/me/rootfs/lib/firmware -Jxvf /home/me/f19-firmware.tar.xz
tar -C /run/media/me/uboot/ -Jxvf /home/me/f19-uboot.tar.xz

Now you have to edit /run/media/me/rootfs/etc/fstab

Change rootfs to:

/dev/mmcblk1p3  /               ext4    defaults,noatime        0 0

This is because the date at boot is earlier than last run.

Add for swap:

/dev/mmcblk1p2	swap		swap	defaults,noatime	0 0

To add serial console getty, paste the following lines to build ttyS0.conf:

cat <<EOF>/run/media/me/rootfs/etc/init/ttyS0.conf || exit 1
start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
stop on starting runlevel [016]

respawn

pre-start exec /sbin/securetty ttyS0
exec /sbin/agetty -L /dev/ttyS0 115200 vt102
EOF

Now getty on the first terminal is disabled. By default it starts at 2. 
To set to include tty1 this will need to be set in:

 /run/media/rgm/rootfs/etc/sysconfig/init
 /run/media/rgm/rootfs/etc/init/start-ttys.conf

ACTIVE_CONSOLES=/dev/tty[1-5]

Last step is to make the card bootable:


/run/media/rgm/uboot/select-board.sh cubieboard2

Note here is where you can specify a different Allwinner based board.

If you don't want to follow all these steps, get the compressed SDcard image and build the boot card with:

xzcat /home/me/rsel-minimal.img.xz > /dev/sdb; sync


Umount the card, insert in your Cubieboard, connect monitor, keyboard, mouse, and serial USB and boot!

Login as root with password of password and change your password.  

You are now ready to update the base install to current rpms:

yum update redsleeve-release
yum update

Or again, I have a compressed SDcard image as of 08/10/2104 that can be installed by:

xzcat /home/me/rsel-minimal-20140810.img.xz > /dev/sdb; sync

I don't like an unsecure build and no SSH access.  The F19 provided kernel has SELinux support, so:

yum install openssh-server system-config-securitylevel selinux-policy rsyslog

run system-config-firewall to setup your firewall rules.

chkconfig --level 3 sshd on
chkconfig --level 3 iptables on

Reboot to get selinux, iptables, and sshd active or install:

xzcat /home/me/rsel-secure-20140810.img.xz > /dev/sdb; sync

NOTE!  Selinux is NOT working right on this image it is coming up disabled.  
SElinux support is still a work in progress!

hostname foo.bar.com

adduser -c "Me I am" -G wheel me
passwd me



HDD or SSD installation

The Cubieboards can only boot from nand or SDcard, but can run the rootfs from a SATA connected drive.

dd the selected image to your HDD or SSD.

You have to edit /run/media/me/rootfs/etc/fstab

Change rootfs to:

/dev/sda3  /               ext4    defaults,noatime        0 0

Actually it boots without this change becuase of the later change you make to uEnv.txt,
  but this is the proper content for fstab.

Change swap to:

/dev/sda2	swap		swap	defaults,noatime	0 0

Or no swap drive!

Next, I have chosen the SDcard boot, as it is simpler.

Make a bootable SDcard with the minimal image.  Copy our image of choice to your SSD/HDD drive and use gpart
 or similar tool to enlarge the rootfs partition.

Mount the SDcard and edit: /run/media/me/uboot/uEnv.txt

changing mmcblk1p3 to sda3

Or you can download and install only the uboot partition on an SDcard of at least 1Gb

xzcat /home/me/rsel-sata-uboot.img.xz > /dev/sdb; sync

Insert the SDcard and attach the sata drive to your Cubieboard and boot.  It is that simple.

Or you can figure out clear instructions for changing the nand boot and telling me so I can update 
 this README.


ETHERNET CAVEATS

I forgot to clear out /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Check to make sure it has only one entry for your ethernet adapter.

If you want static addresses, creating a /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 is up to you.



Robert Moskowitz

rgm at htt dash consult dot com