4 ) The prepared gentoo root fs: rk-gentoo.tar.gz

^ This is a CONVENTIONAL (i.e. not musltronic ) gentoo for arm64 architecture.

Only the SD card will contain machine-specific bootloaderisms:

5 ) The bootloaderisms: loaders.tar.gz

6 ) OPTIONAL: vendor-patched kernel source and .config:

asciilifeform-kernel.tar.gz

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
7 ) Verify the signature and hashes of above in MANIFEST.TXT !!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

----------------
SD Card for Boot
----------------

The rk3328-roc-cc can boot from either eMMC (not discussed, I do not
use it ) or microSD card (we will use the latter. ) To prepare a u-SD
card for booting, obtain a card of at least 256MB capacity, and place
into a suitable reader. The instructions below assume that this device
shows up on your system as /dev/sdb, and is writeable to by the user
as which you are working. Adjust as necessary.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
WARNING: if you are careless, you WILL nuke YOUR workstation's disk!!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

First, create the partitions:

1 ) parted -s /dev/sdb mklabel gpt

2 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb unit s mkpart l1 64 8063

3 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb unit s mkpart l2 16384 24575

4 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb unit s mkpart t 24576 32767

5 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb unit s mkpart boot fat16 32768 262143

6 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb set 4 boot on

7 ) sync

Now extract the loader images:

8 ) tar xvfz loaders.tar.gz

9 ) dd if=l1.bin of=/dev/sdb1

^ this is the vendor's RAM initializer. Recent uboot obsoletes it,
but I have not tested this yet. For now we use the original.

10 ) dd if=l2.bin of=/dev/sdb2

^ this is more or less ordinary u-boot, Rockchip's www has the
source.

11 ) dd if=t.bin of=/dev/sdb3

^ this is the ARM hypervisor turd; ARM's www has the source.
AFAIK this thing does not actually do anything without OS support.

12 ) dd if=kern.bin of=/dev/sdb4

^ this is a FAT16 partition containing my kernel ( see further
below. ) It will get mounted as /boot later .

13 ) sync

14 ) Disconnect the SD reader from your workstation !

----------------------------
USB3 Stick for '/' Partition
----------------------------

Obtain a suitable USB3 stick. I recommend Samsung's.

It is also possible to use a mechanical (or SSD) SATA drive,
via a suitable adapter cable.

Do not use USB2 disks, gentooation will be painfully slow on these.

The instructions again assume that it is seen by the machine as
/dev/sdb. If this is not the case on your system, adjust the recipe.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
WARNING: if you are careless, you WILL nuke YOUR workstation's disk!!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

1 ) parted -s -a optimal /dev/sdb mklabel gpt -- mkpart primary ext4 1 -1

2 ) mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

3 ) sync

4 ) mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

5 ) tar pxvfz rk-gentoo.tar.gz -C /mnt/usb

6 ) edit, with your favourite text editor, /mnt/usb/conf.d/net :

comment out, if required, the line with dhcp, and uncomment and
properly adjust the ones pertaining to static ip; or leave this
config alone for a dhcp on boot.

7 ) put your hostname in /mnt/usb/conf.d/hostname

8 ) sync

9 ) umount /mnt/usb

10 ) Insert the SD card and USB3 drive into the RK machine;
connect the network cable, but see below first:

11 ) WARNING -- DO NOT EXPOSE THE BOX ON PUBLIC NET YET:

%%% the root password is null! %%%
%%% the ssh host privkey is unsecret! %%%

To fix these, boot up on an isolated LAN first, and, via ssh,

11-1 ) set the root password using the passwd command.

11-2 ) generate a NEW SSH HOSTKEY :

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N ""

12 ) The kit is now ready for use.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Be aware that my kernel does not support video, mice, or keyboards,
it is meant purely for headless machines. If this is not what you
want, unpack asciilifeform-kernel.tar.gz , edit the config, and
build a new kernel; then install it into /boot (i.e. your SD card.)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%