Tinilinux

"Tini" Linux distro for H700, RK3326 & RK3566 SOC devices

Boards & defconfig

Board Name	CPU/Arch	GPU	Kernel	Init	Rootfs	Notes
rgb30	aarch64 (Cortex-A55)	Panfrost	6.18.6	systemd	squashfs/overlay	Rockchip, EGL/ES, U-Boot, SDL2 KSMDRM, Python3, OpenSSL, SSH, Retroarch
h700	aarch64 (Cortex-A53)	Panfrost	6.18.6	systemd	squashfs/overlay	Sun50i, EGL/ES, U-Boot, SDL2 KSMDRM, Python3, OpenSSL, SSH, Retroarch
xxx_rootrw	-	Panfrost	-	systemd	ext4 (rw)	uses ext4 read-write rootfs instead of squashfs
xxx_consoleonly	-	N/A	-	systemd	squashfs/overlay	include only base components for console, no GPU and GUI apps
xxx_sway	-	Panfrost	-	systemd	squashfs/overlay	uses sway compositor instead of KMSDRM, helps to deal with RG28xx screen rotation issue
pc_qemu_aarch64_virt	aarch64	virgl	-	systemd	squashfs/overlay	build kernel, initramfs, rootfs to test wit qemu
toolchain_targetArch	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	build toolchain only to be reused for other builds

Build

Clone TiniLinux and buildroot repo and setup environments

# Install required packages
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential cmake mtools libncurses-dev dosfstools parted

# Clone sources
git clone https://github.com/haoict/TiniLinux.git

# Create board config
cd TiniLinux
./make-board-build.sh configs/<boardname>_defconfig

# Build
cd output.<boardname>
make menuconfig # adjust anything if you want, otherwise just exit. If you add/remove packages, you can save changes with "make savefconf" command to update board's defconfig file.
make -j$(nproc)
## The kernel, bootloader, root filesystem, etc. are in output images directory

# Make flashable img file
make img

Install

Flash to sdcard

There are many tools to flash img file to SDCard such as Rufus, Balena Etcher. But if you prefer command line:

make flash

Update rootfs only without reflashing sdcard

sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb /mnt/rootfs
sudo rm -rf /mnt/rootfs/*
sudo tar -xvf images/rootfs.tar -C /mnt/rootfs && sync
sudo umount /dev/sdb
sudo eject /dev/sdb

Notes

Build from docker container

If it's inconvernient to build directly in host machine, for example MacOS host, you can build TiniLinux inside a docker container

# Clone sources
git clone https://github.com/haoict/TiniLinux.git

cd TiniLinux

# Build the image and run container (if the image already built and the container already ran, skip to the "docker exec..." command below)
docker build -t ghcr.io/haoict/tinilinux-builder:latest .
docker run --name tinilinux-builder -d -v $(pwd):/home/ubuntu/TiniLinux -v tinilinux-builder-buildroot:/home/ubuntu/buildroot ghcr.io/haoict/tinilinux-builder:latest

docker exec -it tinilinux-builder bash

# NOTE: Commands from here are executed inside docker container
cd TiniLinux
./make-board-build.sh configs/<boardname>_defconfig docker
cd /home/ubuntu/buildroot/output.<boardname>
make -j$(nproc)
make img

# copy output images dir to the TiniLinux folder
cd /home/ubuntu/TiniLinux
mkdir -p output.<boardname>
cp -r /home/ubuntu/buildroot/output.<boardname>/images output.<boardname>

Test with qemu

With pc_qemu_targetArch_virt build, we can test kernel, initramfs, rootfs disk with qemu

sudo apt install qemu-system-aarch64
cd output.pc_qemu_aarch64_virt (or _consoleonly variant)
make -j$(nproc)
ZIP=0 make img
make runqemu (or make runqemugui)

Clean target build without rebuild all binaries and libraries

Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47320800/how-to-clean-only-target-in-buildroot

# list all built packages
cd output.${BOARD}
make show-targets

# clean some packages that usually change
make alsa-lib-dirclean alsa-plugins-dirclean alsa-utils-dirclean btop-dirclean dingux-commander-dirclean gptokeyb2-dirclean retroarch-dirclean rocknix-joypad-dirclean sdl2-dirclean simple-launcher-dirclean simple-terminal-dirclean systemd-dirclean tinilinux-initramfs-dirclean wayland-dirclean wayland-protocols-dirclean wpa_supplicant-dirclean

# clean target without rebuild: make clean-target
rm -rf target && find  -name ".stamp_target_installed" -delete && rm -f build/host-gcc-final-*/.stamp_host_installed

Unpack/Repack initramfs

Unpack

mkdir initramfs-files
cd initramfs-files
zcat ../initramfs | cpio -id

Repack

find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > ../initramfs-modified.cpio.gz

Run Docker

# All versions can be found here: https://download.docker.com/linux/static/stable/aarch64/
wget https://download.docker.com/linux/static/stable/aarch64/docker-29.1.3.tgz
tar -xzvf docker-29.1.3.tgz
mv docker/* /usr/bin/
dockerd &
docker run -p 8080:80 -d --name hello --rm nginxdemos/hello
docker ps -a
curl localhost:8080

Build toolchains

To save build time, instead of building buildroot toolchain every time for each board, we can build toolchain once and use it as "external toolchain" for boards configs.

./make-board-build.sh configs/toochain_aarch64_defconfig
cd output.toochain_aarch64
make -j$(nproc)
cd host
tar -Jcf ../tinilinux-toolchain-$(uname -m)-aarch64-glibc-gcc14.3-kernel6.6.x-binutils2.43.1.tar.xz .