CentOS announce - May 2015 - CentOS-7 disk images for AArch64 Platforms

We've produced a disk image intended to help hardware vendors and
enthusiasts who are interested in bringing CentOS to their AArch64 based
platform. This allows a vendor to bypass the installer or to edit the
disk image before booting in order to test kernel modules or options. It
is intended for development purposes only, and will only continue
through the alpha and beta test phases.



## Download

http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/isos/aarch64/


## Considerations

 * This image is 12GB when uncompressed. Please ensure you have enough
   free space

 * The default root password is 'centos'. Please see the readme in the
above directory for the kickstart used to create the image.

 * You will need to add the appropriate boot information in a UEFI entry
   after using this image, since the installer traditionally handles
   this.


## Burning the image to disk

You may simply dd this image to disk, however for the sake of ensuring
that it is written correctly, we recommend the following command. Please
replace the image-name and target device with the appropriate values for
your environment.


```
dd if=<image-name.img> of=/dev/sdX bs=2m conv=fsync && sync;
```

## Growing the disk image.

The root partition of this image was intentionally placed at the end of
the image so that it could be easily grown. A simple command for growing
the image is listed below


```
sudo sgdisk -e -d4 -n4:0:0  /dev/<your-device>
```


## Examining and editing the image

The kpartx tool is very handy for manipulating disk images. Some example
commands are below. Please read the documentation for kpartx before you
modify the disk image.


 * kpartx -l CentOS-7-1503-aarch64.img # List partitions in the image
 * kpartx -a -v CentOS-7-1503-aarch64.img # Add partition mappings
 * mount /dev/mapper/loop1p1 /mnt # mount the first partition to /mnt
 * umount /mnt # unmount /mnt, obviously.
 * kpartx -d -v CentOS-7-1503-aarch64.img # remove partition mappings


-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77

On Thu, 2015-05-14 at 14:25 -0500, Jim Perrin wrote:
> We've produced a disk image intended to help hardware vendors and
> enthusiasts who are interested in bringing CentOS to their AArch64 based
> platform. This allows a vendor to bypass the installer or to edit the
> disk image before booting in order to test kernel modules or options. It
> is intended for development purposes only, and will only continue
> through the alpha and beta test phases.
Does this mean it may be possible to run basic version of C5, C6 and C7
on Arm64* CPU systems ?  Presumably this will include the Raspberry Pi ?



* Acorn Research machines; manufacturers of the BBC Models A, B, B+,
Master 128 etc - those were the days.


-- 
Regards,

Paul.
England, EU.      Je suis Charlie.

On 5/14/2015 1:39 PM, Always Learning wrote:
> Does this mean it may be possible to run basic version of C5, C6 and C7
> on Arm64* CPU systems ?  Presumably this will include the Raspberry Pi ?
is the rasberry pi ARMv8 (arm64) ?  I thought it was v7 (32bit only)

-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

On 05/14/2015 03:39 PM, Always Learning wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2015-05-14 at 14:25 -0500, Jim Perrin wrote:
>> We've produced a disk image intended to help hardware vendors and
>> enthusiasts who are interested in bringing CentOS to their AArch64
based
>> platform. This allows a vendor to bypass the installer or to edit the
>> disk image before booting in order to test kernel modules or options.
It
>> is intended for development purposes only, and will only continue
>> through the alpha and beta test phases.
> 
> Does this mean it may be possible to run basic version of C5, C6 and C7
> on Arm64* CPU systems ?  Presumably this will include the Raspberry Pi ?
> 
> 
No. What I'm working on is 64bit/ARMv8 only. If you want something
that's similar form factor to the rpi, you might check out

https://www.96boards.org/products/hikey/

It *should* run on that. I haven't tested this yet, so I can't say for
certain. I should have one of these fairly soon though, and will then be
able to give a definite answer.

Fabian is working on an ARMv7(32bit) build that will support things like
the odroid, and rpi2.


-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77