Installing Arch Linux ARM on a Pinebook Pro

Date: Mon 2025-06-02

Permalink: https://www.dominic-ricottone.com/posts/2025/06/installing-arch-linux-arm-on-a-pinebook-pro/


A series of notes for future me, regarding the installation of Arch Linux ARM on a Pinebook Pro.

First, installing a new OS.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the process:

From here you’d normally genfstab, arch-chroot, pacstrap, etc. But since you’re almost certainly creating an ARM installation on an AMD64 host, that’s not going to work very well.

Next best things:

But… There’s some things about the Pinebook Pro…

The boot order is hardcoded:

  1. SPI flash
  2. eMMC
  3. SD Card
  4. USB

Many guides include details for installing to NVME, which is possible, except that the NVME isn’t bootable.

Also you can’t actually boot by USB. As in, it’s been plainly advertised all along that you cannot boot by USB-C, but you can’t really do it by USB-B either.

I didn’t realize this until I decided that I wanted to re-install: the boot loader I have on the SPI flash doesn’t support selecting a boot device! What a silly oversight. That means I have to flash a new boot loader before I can do anything but boot from removable drives.

Then I can boot from a removable SD card and use that installation to install Arch again on the eMMC.

In summary, what you need to do is:

  1. Power down.
  2. Open up the chassis.
  3. Flip the hardware switch disabling power to the eMMC module. It’s a little push toggle on the motherboard next to the battery. There’s a white outline on the motherboard below indicating the ‘on’ position.
  4. Verify that the eMMC isn’t bootable by powering on. Nothing should happen, the power LED should remain orangish-red. Power off.
  5. dd a boot loader installer to an SD card. Currently Tow-Boot is recommended, but way back when, U-Boot was preferred. See above for how that turned out. For Tow-Boot, and for the SPI flash destination specifically, the image is named spi.installer.img.
  6. Insert that SD card and power on. Boot that installer and flash a new boot loader to the SPI flash. It’s a graphical interface, just follow instructions dummy. Power off and remove the SD card.
  7. Verify the boot loader installation by powering on. Nothing should happen again, but the boot loader should have looked different! Unless you were already running an up-to-date boot loader.
  8. Power off again and open the chassis back up, it’s time to re-enable the eMMC module. Then close it back up.
  9. Install Arch on an SD card. Probably on the same card as before, since you don’t need to keep a boot loader installer laying around.
  10. Insert that SD card and power on. Open the boot menu by pressing ESC; select the SD option.
  11. Install Arch on eMMC.

And one last note: you need to create a file at boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf that looks like the below.

DEFAULT arch
MENU TITLE Boot Menu
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 50

LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux ARM
LINUX /Image
INITRD /initramfs-linux.img
FDT /dtbs/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb
APPEND root=UUID=c1ec9712-5c64-46da-852c-9d665416e8a6 rw

LABEL arch-fallback
MENU LABEL Arch Linux ARM with fallback initramfs
LINUX /Image
INITRD /initramfs-linux-fallback.img
FDT /dtbs/rockchip/rk3399-pinebook-pro.dtb
APPEND root=UUID=c1ec9712-5c64-46da-852c-9d665416e8a6 rw

That UUID should match the partition mounted as /, by the way.

You’ll see some guides talk about cmdline or cmdline.txt; don’t do that. Another thing that fell out of style. That APPEND directive is appending to the Linux boot cmdline, so really this is just another layer of abstraction.

After doing it twice, you should be fully comfortable with the process.

(Now that I think about it, I actually should have been able to use arch-chroot for the second installation… something to think about for the future.)

As a note:

From here, there’s not too much that differs from a normal Arch installation.

Change default users and passwords, locale-gen, localectl, timedatectl, etc.

I recently found a great tip: sudo pacman -S $(pacman -Ssq noto-fonts).

Since this is Arch Linux ARM, don’t forget to pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm after pacman-key --init.

Depending on the model of Pinebook Pro you may need to set the ISO keymap. That’s as easy as localctl set-keymap uk.

Install pipewire, pipewire-jack, pipewire-pulseaudio, wireplumber, pavucontrol, … it all works right out of the box.

Then we get to the networking stack… I noted it above, and I’ll reiterate it here, you’re likely going to need an ethernet USB dongle. Because the networking stack for Pinebook Pro is ass.

If you’re lucky, the drivers will work out the box. You’ll know because wlan0 shows up for ip link. If you’re unlucky…

Don’t bother fighting with systemd-networkd. You’re already fighting an uphill battle against hardware. Just give in, and plan to use iwctl. If you’re unfamiliar with this new age tool (like me), try:

$ iwctl
[iwd]# device list
[iwd]# station DEVICE scan
[iwd]# station DEVICE get-networks
[iwd]# station DEVICE connect SSID

And when you make a mistake, rinse and repeat with:

[iwd]# known-networks SSID forget

Disable IPv6 by creating /etc/iwd/main.conf with:

[Network]
EnableIPv6=false

You can also get away without installing dhcpcd by using a built-in client. Your mileage may vary. To that same file, add:

[General]
EnableNetworkConfiguration=true

Install xfce4 and xfce4-goodies, run startxfce4, you’re golden.


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