The 2zau PineTab2 Fedora Image

What is this (the TL;DR)

The 2zau PineTab2 Fedora image is a Fedora Linux aarch64 image build for the PineTab2 using patches from the upstream (from my perspective) DanctNIX Arch Linux ARM PineTab2 Factory image.

How to install the 2zau PineTab2 Fedora image

1. Download the latest image from the 2zau Build Server
   • Direct Link (Minimal): TODO
   • Direct Link (Sway): https://build.2z.au/pinetab2/latest/Fedora-Sway-Disk-PineTab2-44.2zau.aarch64.img.xz
   • (Other Spins can be created, let me know if you have any requests)
2. Boot the PineTab2 from an SDCard
   • I would recommend the Danctnix Arch Linux ARM SDCard image which can be found on the Releases page of the Pine64 PineTab2 Docs.
3. Get the image that was downloaded in Step 1, onto the PineTab2
   • It’s probably easiest copied onto a USB stick, but you could download it directly onto the PineTab2 from the 2zau Build Server using $ curl.
   • You could also probably transfer it over serial if you tried hard enough. All I can say to that is good-luck.
4. Write the image to the internal eMMC storage
   • Make sure you’re writing to the correct drive. It should be /dev/mmcblk0, though always double-check $ blkid.
     • The internal eMMC should be unmounted (if you correctly booted from an SDCard and haven’t manually mounted it), and be approximately 64/128 GiB (depending on the model of PineTab2 you got).
   • $ xz -d --stdout /mnt/usb/Fedora-Sway-Disk-PineTab2-44.2zau.1.aarch64.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M conv=fsync
     • The benefit of doing it this way, where the file is decompressed to stdout and piped to dd, is that you never need to have the full decompressed image written to your USB/SDCard at any point.
5. (Optional, Recommended) Expand the image root partition to fully utilise your internal eMMC
   1. Expand the partition
      • # growpart /dev/mmcblk0 3
        • The growpart command is not included default in the DanctNIX Arch image, it can be installed as part of the cloud-guest-utils package.
        • # pacman -S cloud-guest-utils
   2. Expand the filesystem
      • # btrfs filesystem resize --offline max /dev/mmcblk0p3
        • The btrfs command is not included default in the DanctNIX Arch image, it can be installed as part of the btrfs-progs package.
        • # pacman -S btrfs-progs
6. Boot the PineTab2 from the internal eMMC
   • Power-off the system
     • $ systemctl poweroff
   • Remove the SDCard
   • Power-on the system
     • Power-on may take a minute or two before any output appears.
7. Complete the Fedora Initial-Setup flow
   • This stage allows you to set some initial configuration for your device, such as setting up your User Account, Networking, and Timezone info.
8. Login
   • Congratulations, you now have a working Fedora install running on the PineTab2.

Background

TODO: write the rest of the blog post

COPR Repo: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/2z-au/pinetab2/

Git Repos: https://codeberg.org/2zau/