Hello – I just ordered the 820c from Arrow. What instructions do I need in order to get it booting to a Linux desktop that supports a recent Chromium version? Any distribution is fine as long as I can get GPU support.
At present the best place to start is probably one of the experimental builds on the snapshot server: https://snapshots.linaro.org/96boards/dragonboard820c/linaro/debian/857/. Install instructions are here: Linux Host Installation for DragonBoard 820c - 96Boards .
@danielt I have the board running and it came with Chromium 67. This is quite old. When I request an update from apt, it says it’s already at the latest. Would updating the build help, or is that just the latest version for this hardware?
Here’s how I attempted to update the build:
- downloaded boot/alip files, unziped img files to MicroSD, inserted into board
- shutdown system with
sudo shutdown now, powered back up withvol-pressed (did not get fastboot) - pulled power, plugged power back in with
vol-pressed (did not get fastboot) - tried
sudo cat /dev/zero > /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot(got permission denied)
I’m not sure if I’m approaching this correctly – can I plug in a screen, get to fastboot, and image from the MicroSD? Or do I need to be doing things with a serial console or MicroUSB?
As far as I remember DB820C doesn’t boot from SD card (which is why I linked to the fastboot install instructions); you need to connect to the microUSB (J4) connector to your PC. You do not need the optional serial connection.
When you boot with the Vol - pressed the board will appear not to boot (e.g. the lights won’t adopt the heartbeat pattern). However you can detect that it is in fastboot mode by running sudo fastboot devices
PS I am running Debian bookworm/sid for AArch64 on my current workstation (e.g. essentially the same OS as the #857 snapshot) and I have Chromium 103.
@danielt Thanks for the reply, sorry to follow up with more newbie questions.
If the device doesn’t boot to a display, what am I typing sudo fastboot into? SSH?
What is the microUSB connection for? Is that creating some kind of serial interface? Or am I transferring the img files over that way?
Do I need a dedicated Linux PC for this process? A VM is all I can manage at the moment.
fastboot is a USB protocol that you can use to send images from the host to the target (when it is booted into fastboot mode). Installation instructions for using fastboot are linked to from my initial reply and explain what comes out the serial port (if you have one) and what you can see when you run commands on the host PC.
The instructions are for dedicated Linux PC. It should be possible to run fastboot from a VM but I’m afraid that makes figuring out how to do USB peripheral sharing your problem. To be honest I thinkk that is what the CFA (Call For Action) in the host setup document is all about: to encourage any Windows or MacOS users to share information about USB peripheral sharing on the forums (or as github pull requests on the docs).
