Getting Started Guide for ROCKPro64

Introduction to ROCKPro64

This guide summarizes the steps required to get a ROCKPro64 board up and running. It's basically an excerpt of the official Pine64 documentation.

At the very minimum you'll need:

Hardware	Specifications
Micro SD Card	Min: 2GB Max: 256GB
Power Adapter	12V 3A (minimum)

Basic Preliminary Work

 TODO

Booting the Board

By default, the board may boot three different devices:

SPI NOR
eMMC
Micro SD Card

There is an onboard Boot ROM that selects the boot order between the first three. By default, the SPI NOR has no firmware flashed, so the execution continues to eMMC and SD card. The boot order is:

SPI NOR
eMMC
Micro SD Card

In the original packaging, the ROCKPro64 does not include an eMMC chip. You'll see the empty connector in red in Figure 1:

If this is your case, you can only boot from SD card.

If you do have an eMMC chip and both, the eMMC and the SD card, contain a bootable image, you can still select the boot device using the jumper shown in Figure 1. The following table summarizes the required configuration:

SD Card	eMMC	Jumper	Boot from
Not available	Not available	Open	Invalid
Not available	Not available	Closed	Invalid
Not Available	Available	Open	eMMC
Not Available	Available	Closed	Invalid
Available	Not available	Open	SD Card
Available	Not available	Closed	SD Card
Available	Available	Open	eMMC
Available	Available	Closed	SD Card

By installing U-boot to the SPI Flash additional devices can be used to boot:

USB
Network (via PXE)

Booting from eMMC

 TODO

Booting from an SD Card

For this guide, we'll be using a pre-built Armbian image. This image in particular does not contain a desktop environment. There are a bunch of other images available for the ROCKChip64 that you may check. Open a terminal and run the following commands:

Download the image

 wget -c -O armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img.xz https://redirect.armbian.com/rockpro64/Focal_current

Uncompress the image

unxz armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img.xz

Insert the SD card in the computer
Find out the device for your SD card (from the remainder of the example I'll use /dev/mmcblk0).
Unmount the device
```
DEVICE=/dev/mmcblk0
sudo umount $DEVICE
```
Flash the image on the device. Make sure you have the correct device!
```
sudo dd if= armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img of=$DEVICE bs=1m
```
Ensure everything is properly written to the SD card
```
sync
```

And that's it! You may remove the SD card from the computer and insert it in your ROCKPro64.

Booting from an USB drive

For this guide, we'll be using a pre-built Armbian image. This image in particular does not contain a desktop environment. There are a bunch of other images available for the ROCKChip64 that you may check. Open a terminal and run the following commands:

Make sure your SPI Flash has U-boot installed by following these instructions one time.

Download the image

 wget -c -O armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img.xz https://redirect.armbian.com/rockpro64/Focal_current

Uncompress the image

unxz armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img.xz

Insert the USB drive in the computer
Find out the device for your USB drive (from the remainder of the example I'll use /dev/sdc).
Unmount the device
```
DEVICE=/dev/sdc
sudo umount $DEVICE
```
Flash the image on the device. Make sure you have the correct device!
```
sudo dd if= armbian_rockpro64_focal_current.img of=$DEVICE bs=1m
```
Ensure everything is properly written to the SD card
```
sync
```

And that's it! You may remove the USB drive from the computer and insert it in your ROCKPro64.

Booting from Network (via PXE)

 TODO

Accessing the Board

Via Display and Keyboard

This is the most straightforward method, but with the time you'll see that you'll work more agilely if you connect over SSH. Use this method if you have no other way of figuring the IP address of the board.

Connect a keyboard to one of the USB ports
Connect an HDMI display
Log in to the terminal
- User: root
- Pass: 1234
Follow the instructions to create the system defaults

For the next sessions, I strongly recommend you enter the user and password you just created.

Via SSH

For this method, you'll need to power your board and wait for a little until the SSH server is started. If this is the first boot, this may take up to a minute.

Find the board's IP. The easiest way to do this is to enter your router's configuration page and see the DHCP client list. You'll see a rockpro64 entry. Sadly, the board doesn't come with a mDNS service out of the box. (I'll use 192.168.1.111 for the remainder of the example).

Connect to the board

IP_ADDRESS=162.168.1.111
ssh root@$IP_ADDRESS

Log in to the terminal
- Pass: 1234
Follow the instructions to create the system defaults

For the next sessions, I strongly recommend you enter the user and password you just created.

Via UART

 TODO

Useful Commands for Newly Flashed Boards

Device Autodiscovery

This will allow you to access the board via a hostname instead of an IP address.

Update APT caches
```
sudo apt update
```
Install Avahi mDNS server
```
sudo apt install avahi-daemon
```
Now, from your computer, you may access the board using:
```
ssh username@rockpro64.local
```
Note that username is the user you created.

Connect to WiFi

If you have the wifi adapter you may very easily connect to your wireless network using the following command.

Launch Network Manager Text User Interface
```
nmtui
```
Search and activate your SSID (wireless network)
Check you actually have an IP address
```
ifconfig
```

The WiFi module doesn't come by default with the ROCKPro64. If you're not sure if you have the WiFi module, here's what it looks like:

Adding More Boot Devices

By default, the ROCKPro64 will attempt to boot from:

SPI NOR
eMMC
SD Card

By flashing the SPI NOR with U-Boot additional boot options may be added:

USB2
USB3
PXE (Network)

Run the following steps in your host computer:

Download the flashing image

wget -c https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-u-boot/releases/download/2017.09-rockchip-ayufan-1065-g95f6152134/u-boot-flash-spi-rockpro64.img.xz

This GitHub repo contains all the releases.

Insert the SD card in the computer
Find out the device for your SD card (from the remainder of the example I'll use /dev/mmcblk0).
Unmount the device
```
DEVICE=/dev/mmcblk0
sudo umount $DEVICE
```

Flash the image to the SD card

xz -k -d -c -v -T 3 u-boot-flash-spi-rockpro64.img.xz | sudo dd of=$DEVICE bs=1m

Ensure everything is properly written
```
sync
```
Insert the SD card on the board and power up. This image will write U-boot to the SPI Flash. Wait until the white led (power led) starts blinking once every second.
Remove the SD card from the board.

That's it! Now you should be able to boot from USB and boot from PXE.

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