Magenta on Raspberry Pi 3

Magenta is a 64-bit kernel that is capable of running on the Raspberry Pi 3.

Presently it supports a number of the Raspberry Pi 3's peripherals including the following:

  • USB (Keyboard, Mouse, Flash Drives)
  • Ethernet
  • Software Driven HDMI
  • Serial Port (MiniUART)

The following peripherals are not yet supported:

  • Wi-Fi
  • Hardware Accelerated Graphics
  • Bluetooth

Requirements

The following hardware is required:

  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • MicroSD Card (at least 32MB suggested)
  • Micro USB cable for power
  • At least one of the following for Input/Output
    • 3.3v FTDI Serial Dongle (recommended, especially for low-level hacking)
    • USB Keyboard / HDMI Monitor

Building

To build magenta, invoke the following command from the top level Magenta directory (ensure that you have checked out the ARM64 toolchains). For more information, see docs/getting_started.md:

make magenta-rpi3-arm64

Installing

  1. To install Magenta, ensure that your SD is formatted as follows:

    • Using an MBR partition table
    • With a FAT32 boot partition

  2. Invoking make magenta-rpi3-arm64 should have created files magenta.bin and bootdata.bin the following path ./build-magenta-rpi3-arm64/

  3. Copy the magenta.bin file to the SD card's boot partition as kernel8.img as follows:

     cp ./build-magenta-rpi3-arm64/magenta.bin <path/to/sdcard/mount>/kernel8.img

  4. Copy the bootdata.bin file to the SD card's boot partition as follows:

     cp ./build-magenta-rpi3-arm64/bootdata.bin <path/to/sdcard/mount>/bootdata.bin

  5. You must also copy bootcode.bin and start.elf to the boot partition. They can be obtained from here and here respectively.

  6. Copy config.txt cmdline.txt and bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb from ./kernel/target/rpi3/ to the boot partition:

      cp ./kernel/target/rpi3/config.txt <path/to/sdcard/mount>/config.txt
  cp ./kernel/target/rpi3/cmdline.txt <path/to/sdcard/mount>/cmdline.txt
  cp ./kernel/target/rpi3/bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb <path/to/sdcard/mount>/bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb

    It is imperative that these files are named exactly as listed when copied to the SD card.

  7. At this point your SD Card should be formatted with an MBR partition table and FAT32 boot partition that contains the following 7 files:

    • bootcode.bin
    • bootdata.bin
    • config.txt
    • kernel8.img
    • start.elf
    • bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb
    • cmdline.txt

  8. If you're using the Serial Console, connect your serial dongle to the RPi3 header as follows:

    1. Pin 6 - GND
    2. Pin 8 - TXD (output from Pi)
    3. Pin 10 - RXD (input to pi)
    4. Baudrate = 115200

  9. Insert the SD Card and connect power to boot the Pi

Netboot

Add netsvc.netboot=true to cmdline.txt to enable netbooting from the SD Card.