ARM64 CentOS AltArch Release 7.5

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Hi,

I have two questions:

(1) In 7.3 CentOS released a rootfs tar for ARM64. I can no longer find this under the 7.5 release. Furthermore, I could also not find anything on the ISO that seems rootfs-like in any near complete state. The closest was the LiveOS/rootfs.img, but it seems this is not a complete fs as yum is missing components, for example.

So my question is: Is there any way to still use CentOS releases on new ARM64 development environments (without EFI boot support)?

(2) In terms of UEFI firmware support in the ARM64 world (e.g. EDKII vs Uboot), is there any officially supported solution for CentOS, or do you simply support whatever supports the UEFI interface?

Regards, Fred

4 thoughts on - ARM64 CentOS AltArch Release 7.5

  • I have created an image file that we can test. If it does what we need, then we’ll get it on the server in the iso dir.

    Can you take a look at:
    https://people.CentOS.org/hughesjr/CentOS-7-aarch64-Minimal-1805-01.img.xz

    See if that does what you want .. if not let’s figure out what we need to do to get what you want.

    I would not call any of this ‘supported’ .. but the UEFI image is what we provide and really try to ensure is working .. for large data center deployment, etc. (that is really what CentOS is, right) .. BUT .. we would also like to provide images for install on the dev boards as well.

    I plan on mirroring what we are currently doing here for x86_64 (for cloud) on aarch64 as well, maybe this cycle .. certainly by the next monthly cycle.

    http://cloud.CentOS.org/CentOS/7/images/

    There are already a couple old images there:

    http://cloud.CentOS.org/altarch/7/images/aarch64/

    But we should get some 1805 or 1806 images and starting to maintain those as well (again .. maybe this cycle [end of May updates, released this week, 1805], or certainly next cycle [end of June updates, released first week of July, 1806])

    =========================

    The CentOS-Devel mailing list is likely a better place to do this testing, are you subscribed?

    https://lists.CentOS.org/mailman/listinfo/CentOS-devel

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

  • Hi Johnny,

    Thanks a million for your time replying to my query. I honestly appreciate it a lot.

    I will try this thank you.

    Just some feedback from my side, so we have a smart NIC that allows a customer to select a distro going on the NIC itself (providing various custom offload flavors).

    https://www.netronome.com/products/agilio-fx/

    For the first wave, I generate custom images based on Ubuntu and CentOS, so I would love for these rootfs images to be released to some deterministic URL location so that I can generate images with a script. Something along the lines of what was done for 7.3 – the rootfs was available next to the ISO images, but no longer the case with 18.04 (
    http://mirror.CentOS.org/altarch/7/isos/aarch64/).

    (We do eventually plan proper EFI boot support which will allow ISO support in some shape or form, but not right now).

    Thank you for all the effort in supporting the development community.

  • Hi Johnny,

    I have tested this and yes it works for me.

    However, just to clarify, I am not using the image with ARM64 EFI firmware such as EDKII yet, so in fact I pull out the ext4 guts and reformat the rootfs into a custom layout for our flash using uboot.

    If I may be selfish, I would actually prefer an ext4 tarball, as was also previously available for 7.3:
    http://vault.CentOS.org/altarch/7.3.1611/isos/aarch64/

    1. So I am not sure if you would consider my test useful

    2. I did find a minor issue, but I cannot be sure this is not a consequence of the way I have used it:

    [FAILED] Failed to start LSB: Bring up/down networking

    So the first thing I have done was to disable the NetworkManager (and
    -wait-online) service in order to fall back on the network.service. However it still did not work (although I must confess I did not see the same error).

    In my debugging attempt I ran:

    ifup eth2 (I created the ifcfg-eth2 file with networkmanager controlled disbled)

    Error:
    In /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-ipv6 line 56

    This file did not exist: /etc/sysconfig/network

    So I touched this file and it started working for m as I expect after a reboot.

    Apologies if this is a goose chase…