From 737630933b4cc5a0f6c18d8b51f9e42a4e8db45a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Alan Pearce
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2023 10:38:40 +0200
Subject: Add new post about getting NixOS running on NanoPi R5S
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content/post/nixos-on-nanopi-r5s.md | 139 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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++++
+title = "Running NixOS on a NanoPi R5S"
+date = 2023-07-30T08:51:46Z
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["NixOS", "home-networking", "infrastructure"]
++++
+
+I managed to get [NixOS](https://nixos.org) running on my [NanoPi R5S](https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=287) ([FriendlyElec Wiki](https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_R5S)).
+
+Firstly, I flashed a pre-built stock Debian image from [inindev](https://github.com/inindev/nanopi-r5) to an SD card. This can be used as a rescue system later on.
+
+From that SD card, I then flashed the same system onto the internal eMMC Storage. I only really needed to this to ensure UBoot was correctly installed; I think there will be an easier way to do it.
+
+I had nix already installed on the NVMe SSD along with a home directory. I bind-mounted `/nix` and `/home` following the fstab I had previously set up:
+
+```conf
+UUID=replaceme /mnt ext4 relatime,lazytime 0 2
+/mnt/nix /nix none defaults,bind 0 0
+/mnt/srv /srv none defaults,bind 0 0
+/mnt/home /home none defaults,bind 0 0
+```
+
+I then created a user for myself using that home directory, I had full access to nix in the new Debian environment. This meant I had access to `nixos-install`.
+
+I wanted to use the [extlinux support in UBoot](https://u-boot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/develop/distro.html#boot-configuration-files), so I made `/mnt/boot` point to `/boot` on the eMMC:
+
+```sh
+mkdir /mnt/{emmc,boot}
+mount LABEL=rootfs /mnt/emmc
+mount --bind /mnt/emmc /mnt/boot
+```
+
+
+
+I ran `nixos-generate-config` as usual, which set up the mount points in `hardware-configuration.nix` correctly. `configuration.nix` needed a bit of tweaking. My first booting configuration was something like this, mostly borrowed from [Artem Boldariev's comment](https://github.com/inindev/nanopi-r5/issues/11#issue-1789308883):
+
+```nix
+{ config
+, pkgs
+, lib
+, ...
+}:
+let
+ fsTypes = [ "f2fs" "ext" "exfat" "vfat" ];
+in
+{
+ imports = [ ./hardware-configuration.nix ];
+ boot = {
+ kernelParams = [ "console=tty0" ];
+ # partial Rockchip related changes from Debian 12 kernel version 6.1
+ # Also, see here:
+ # https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-provide-missing-headers-to-a-kernel-build/11422/3
+ kernelPatches = [
+ {
+ name = "rockchip-config.patch";
+ patch = null;
+ extraConfig = ''
+ PHY_ROCKCHIP_PCIE Y
+ PCIE_ROCKCHIP_EP y
+ PCIE_ROCKCHIP_DW_HOST y
+ ROCKCHIP_VOP2 y
+ '';
+ }
+ {
+ name = "status-leds.patch";
+ patch = null;
+ # old:
+ # LEDS_TRIGGER_NETDEV y
+ extraConfig = ''
+ LED_TRIGGER_PHY y
+ USB_LED_TRIG y
+ LEDS_BRIGHTNESS_HW_CHANGED y
+ LEDS_TRIGGER_MTD y
+ '';
+ }
+ ];
+
+ supportedFilesystems = fsTypes;
+ initrd.supportedFilesystems = fsTypes;
+
+ initrd.availableKernelModules = [
+ ## Rockchip
+ ## Storage
+ "sdhci_of_dwcmshc"
+ "dw_mmc_rockchip"
+
+ "analogix_dp"
+ "io-domain"
+ "rockchip_saradc"
+ "rockchip_thermal"
+ "rockchipdrm"
+ "rockchip-rga"
+ "pcie_rockchip_host"
+ "phy-rockchip-pcie"
+ "phy_rockchip_snps_pcie3"
+ "phy_rockchip_naneng_combphy"
+ "phy_rockchip_inno_usb2"
+ "dwmac_rk"
+ "dw_wdt"
+ "dw_hdmi"
+ "dw_hdmi_cec"
+ "dw_hdmi_i2s_audio"
+ "dw_mipi_dsi"
+ ];
+ loader = {
+ timeout = 3;
+ grub.enable = false;
+ generic-extlinux-compatible = {
+ enable = true;
+ useGenerationDeviceTree = true;
+ };
+ };
+ };
+ # Most Rockchip CPUs (especially with hybrid cores) work best with "schedutil"
+ powerManagement.cpuFreqGovernor = "schedutil";
+
+ boot.kernelParams = [
+ "console=tty1"
+ "console=ttyS2,1500000"
+ "earlycon=uart8250,mmio32,0xfe660000"
+ ];
+ # Let's blacklist the Rockchips RTC module so that the
+ # battery-powered HYM8563 (rtc_hym8563 kernel module) will be used
+ # by default
+ boot.blacklistedKernelModules = [ "rtc_rk808" ];
+
+ # ... typical config omitted for brevity
+}
+```
+
+Due to the custom kernel configuration, building takes a while. I set up a [distributed build](https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/advanced-topics/distributed-builds.html) to speed things up, using a [Hetzner Cloud](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud) CAX21 ARM64 instance (although I could have used an x86_64 system with one of the methods mentioned on the [NixOS on ARM NixOS wiki page](https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_on_ARM#Build_your_own_image_natively)). This made for a very long `nixos-install` command line:
+
+```sh
+sudo env PATH=$PATH =nixos-install --root /mnt/internal --no-channel-copy --channel https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-23.05 --option builders'ssh://my-host aarch64-linux /root/.ssh/id_pappel_nixpkgs 4 2 big-parallel' --option builders-use-substitutes true --max-jobs 0
+```
+
+I added `setenv bootmeths "extlinux"` to `/boot/boot.txt` and ran `/boot/mkscr.sh` as root to ensure that UBoot would search for the `extlinux.conf` file
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