[Script] Alpine Linux installer for the A20-OLinuXino-Lime2

Started by unicorn, December 12, 2022, 09:56:42 PM

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unicorn

Hello,

I have written a shell script that creates a bootable uSD card for Alpine Linux, since it can be difficult for inexperienced users to build U-Boot with the needed adjustments based on their board version and revision:

https://codeberg.org/unicorn/alpine-a20-olinuxino-lime2

The script builds U-Boot with revision-dependent configuration adjustments since mainline U-Boot has some problems with different revisions of the board. It uses the most recent Alpine Linux Generic ARM archive with mainline Linux and the most recent mainline U-Boot release.

The script interactively asks which revision of the board you have, whether you have eMMC/NAND and which storage device to install to. It also allows interactively creating multiple partitions. Since U-Boot is built inside of a chroot, it has very few dependencies and is written as POSIX-compliant as I could manage, so it should work on most distributions.

I would appreciate any feedback in case of issues or improvement suggestions, also let me know if there are other places where I should share this to help people. :)

About Alpine Linux:
This OS is very interesting since it is very small and has features that make it very easy to run from RAM with the uSD card mounted read-only (in fact it is the default behaviour), which makes it perfect for an SBC like the OLinuXino. Permanent configuration changes can still be easily made with the "lbu" utility, which also makes it very easy to replicate and distribute identical configurations on many different devices. I encourage you to look into it. :)