CentOS-7 Disk Images For AArch64 Platforms

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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= 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/
“`

## 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

9 thoughts on - CentOS-7 Disk Images For AArch64 Platforms

  • 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.

  • You are correct, the Pi is not armv8.

    This is for larger devices … although, there are now a some armv8
    embedded devices too.

    We SHOULD also have an armv7hl branch at some point too (we have just really started working on that) … and I think that will run on the raspberry pi2 when done (though not the original).

    We are trying for large data center devices not cell phones :)

  • ~~~~~~~~~~

    Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is the second generation Raspberry Pi. A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU
    128-bit AMBA® 4 AXI bus interface. The Cortex-A7 processor builds on the energy-efficient 8-stage pipeline of the Cortex-A5 processor. …. with 64-bit load-store path, 128-bit AMBA 4 AXI buses and increased TLB size (256 entry, up from 128
    entry ….

    ARMv7-A

    The MPE extends the Cortex-A7 processor’s FPU to provide a quad-MAC and additional 64-bit and 128-bit register set supporting a rich set of SIMD
    operations over 8, 16 and 32-bit integer and 32-bit Floating-Point data quantities.

    ~~~~~~~~~~

    Except for the above, can’t find any specific mentioned of 32 or 64 bit CPU.

    —
    Regards,

    Paul. England, EU. Je suis Charlie.

  • I would assume there’s more than JUST the CPU instruction set architecture at play here… system boot firmware, and IO device controller support must play a part in this?

  • The RSEL Project has working builds of EL6 and 7 out for embedded ARM
    devices like the raspberry pi. http://www.redsleeve.org

    You need to dig through their wiki four instructions your several devices. Am 14.05.2015 23:46 schrieb “Johnny Hughes” :

  • Vielen dank. The site is currently unreachable. The owner says it will be working this evening. He told me it runs on an ARM.

    —
    Regards,

    Paul. England, EU. England’s place is in the EU.

  • 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.