ODROID U2

The [ODROID U2 ] is an ARM development board, featuring a 1.7 GHz quad-core CPU (ARMv7a). This document contains notes about installing Funtoo Linux on this device.

Micro-SD Card Preparation

First, create the partition structure to suit your needs. In this example, there is a 100 MB boot partition, a 1 GB swap partition, and the remaining partition is for the root filesystem.

The bootloader requires some of the space that is available at the beginning of the device. Keep at least 10 MB free on the beginning of the device.

Partition Table for /dev/sdc
               First       Last # Type
              Sector      Sector   Offset    Length   Filesystem Type (ID) Flag
-- ------- ----------- ----------- ------ ----------- -------------------- ----
   Pri/Log           0       40959*     0#      40960*Free Space           None
 1 Primary       40960*     245759*     0      204800*W95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) Boot
 2 Primary      245760*    2342911*     0     2097152*Linux swap / So (82) None
 3 Primary     2342912*   15661055*     0    13318144*Linux (83)           None
------------------------------------------------------------

sdc1 is formatted as FAT32, sdc2 as swap and sdc3 as ext4.

Note that the boot partition must be the first one, and that its filesystem should be FAT32 or ext2 (not tested).

Funtoo Linux Installation

Follow the guide from [Funtoo_Linux_Installation_on_ARM] for

Kernel and Bootloader

Cross-compiler installation

In order to compile the Linux kernel for the ODROID U2, an ARMv7a hardfloat toolchain is needed. Install it using crossdev:

#  emerge crossdev
#  crossdev -v -t armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi (also add -S if you want a stable toolchain)

Bootloader

The bootloader to use with the ODROID U2 is u-boot. Sources are not available yet. Source code present on hardkernel's github repository is not functional at the time of writing this page.

To be continued... All repositories containing u-boot do not work. A binary version has been found, but not tested yet.

Kernel Compilation an Installation

The kernel for the ODROID U2 can be directly compiled from the sources, given by hardkernel. Note that there are several branches (odroid-3.0.y, odroidx-3.6.y and odroid-next when this page was written), but we will stick with the default branch as it provides a defconfig for a simple start.

#  cd ../odroid_u2
#  git clone https://github.com/hardkernel/linux.git
#  cd linux
#  ARCH=arm make odroidu2_ubuntu_defconfig
#  ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/bin/armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- make -j8 (adapt depending on the number of cores available on the build machine)
#  ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=/usr/bin/armv7a-hardfloat-linux-gnueabi- make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/mnt/SD_root