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    ROCK Pi 4 >  Development >  Build Debian

Rockchip Debian SDK

Below is the instructions of how to build image for ROCK Pi 4.

Get the source code

You need Git to get multiple git repositories to build the image.

Install Git if you don't have it.

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install git

Clone the source code

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/radxa/rockchip-bsp.git

You will get

   build  kernel  README.md  rkbin  rootfs  u-boot

Directories usage introductions:

build:
- Some script files and configuration files for building u-boot, kernel and rootfs.
kernel:
- kernel source code, current version is 4.4
rkbin:
- Prebuilt Rockchip binaries, include first stage loader and ATF(Arm Trustzone Firmware).
rootfs:
- Bootstrap a Debian based rootfs, support architechture armhf and arm64, support Debian Jessie and Stretch.
u-boot:
- u-boot as the second stage bootloader

Install toolchain and other build tools

   sudo apt-get install gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu device-tree-compiler libncurses5 libncurses5-dev build-essential libssl-dev mtools
   sudo apt-get install bc python dosfstools

Build u-boot

   ./build/mk-uboot.sh rockpi4b     #For ROCK Pi 4 Mode B

The generated images will be copied to out/u-boot folder

   ls out/u-boot/
   idbloader.img  rk3399_loader_v1.12.112.bin  trust.img  uboot.img

Build kernel

Build kernel with default rockchip_linux_defconfig

   ./build/mk-kernel.sh rockpi4b    #For ROCK Pi 4 Mode B

Change kernel config(optional)

Optionally, if you want to change the default kernel config

   cd kernel
   export ARCH=arm64
   export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
   make rockchip_linux_defconfig
   make menuconfig
   cd ..
   ./build/mk-kernel.sh rockpi4b    #For ROCK Pi 4 Mode B

You will get the kernel image and dtb file

   ls out/kernel/
   Image  rockpi-4b-linux.dtb

Make rootfs image

To build 32bit rootfs:

   export ARCH=armhf

To build 64bit rootfs:

   export ARCH=arm64

Building a base debian system by ubuntu-build-service from linaro.

   cd rootfs
   sudo apt-get install binfmt-support qemu-user-static cpio gdisk
   sudo dpkg -i ubuntu-build-service/packages/*        # ignore the broken dependencies, we will fix it next step
   sudo apt-get install -f
   RELEASE=stretch TARGET=desktop ARCH=$ARCH ./mk-base-debian.sh

This will bootstrap a Debian stretch image, you will get a rootfs tarball named linaro-stretch-alip-xxxx.tar.gz.

Building the rk-debain rootfs with debug:

   VERSION=debug ARCH=$ARCH ./mk-rootfs-stretch.sh  && ./mk-image.sh

This will install Rockchip specified packages and hooks on the standard Debian rootfs and generate an ext4 format rootfs image at rootfs/linaro-rootfs.img.

Combine everything into one image

   build/mk-image.sh -c rk3399 -t system -r rootfs/linaro-rootfs.img

This will combine u-boot, kernel and rootfs into one image and generate GPT partition table. Output is

   out/system.img

Flash the image

For normal users, follow instructions here. You will need the generated out/system.img only.

For developers, flash from USB OTG port, follow instructions here. You will need the flash helper rk3399_loader_xxx.bin and generated out/system.img files.

Troubleshooting

Check ROCK Pi 4 FAQs first, if it doesn't help, start a new post on the forum https://forum.radxa.com/c/dev

Rockpi4/dev/Debian

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