debian-image-recipes for Rockchip RK3588 boards

Debos recipes to build Debian images for Rockchip RK3588-based boards, as well as RK3576-based boards.

Currently, only the ROCK 5 Model B (RK3588) and the Sige5 (RK3576) are supported by the images.

These images can be flashed to an SD card or eMMC.

Using the images

Prebuilt images

See the CI/CD pipelines to download prebuilt images for your target. Extract the archive somewhere.

RockUSB

It is recommended to use rockusb from the rockchiprs Rust crate to flash the images to the board. It can be installed with:

$ cargo install rockusb --example rockusb --features=libusb

By default, the resulting rockusb binary will be placed in ~/.cargo/bin. It's a good idea to add this directory to your $PATH if you haven't already.

Remove preinstalled bootloader from SPI Flash

The ROCK 5 Model B comes with an old vendor bootloader installed on the SPI Flash which can cause incompatibilities with these mainline-based images. To remove the bootloader from the SPI flash, remove the eMMC, press the maskrom button, plug the board into USB port and run:

$ rkdeveloptool db rk3588_spl_loader_v1.08.111.bin
$ rkdeveloptool ef

Install to eMMC

Press & hold the board's maskrom button before applying power. Once the board is in maskrom mode, release the button.

$ rockusb list
Available rockchip devices
* Bus 006 Device 014: ID 2207:350b

$ rockusb download-boot rk3588_spl_loader_v1.08.111.bin
0 Name: UsbHead
Done!... waiting 1ms
1 Name: rk3588_ddr_lp4_2112M
Done!... waiting 1ms
0 Name: rk3588_usbplug_v1
Done!... waiting 0ms

$ rockusb write-bmap image-rockchip-rock5b-rk3588.img.gz

$ rockusb reset

The process for the Sige5 board is similar, but substituting the loader with the rk3576_spl_loader_* binary and the image with the image-rockchip-sige5-rk3576.img.gz image.

Install to SD card

Copy the image to an SD card using bmaptool, assuming /dev/sdX as the target block device:

# For ROCK 5B
$ bmaptool copy image-rockchip-rock5b-rk3588.img.gz /dev/sdX
# For Sige5
$ bmaptool copy image-rockchip-sige5-rk3576.img.gz /dev/sdX

Using the images

The default username is user, with the password user.

The root partition and filesystem is resized on first boot to take up all remaining space on the medium the image has been installed to.

An sshd runs on the default port of 22. The serial console is accessible at 1.5Mbauds (1500000 baud). The board will announce itself over mDNS, so

$ ssh user@debian-rockchip-rock5b-rk3588.local

will work if your system has mDNS resolution enabled.

Building the images

System requirements

On a Debian (bookworm preferred) system, install debos:

$ sudo apt install debos

Locally build images

The first stage is to build a generic (but architecture-specific) ospack, then assemble the ospack into multiple hardware-specific images.

Linux kernel and u-boot binaries for your specific platform needs to be copied into the prebuilt directory. See download-rockchip-artifacts.sh for the directory layout.

$ ./download-rockchip-artifacts.sh
$ mkdir out
$ debos --artifactdir=out -t architecture:arm64 ospack-debian.yaml
$ debos --artifactdir=out -t architecture:arm64 -t platform:rock5b-rk3588 image-rockchip-rk3588.yaml
$ debos --artifactdir=out -t architecture:arm64 -t platform:sige5-rk3576 image-rockchip-rk3576.yaml