Architectures/ARM/Installation

Installing Fedora on your ARM device.

General process

Arm devices come in both 32-bit and 64-bit variations. Armv9 is the latest version of the arm architecture and is backwards compatible with Armv8 which added 64-bit support in the form of aarch64 mode. Aarch32 is the Armv8 32-bit compatibility mode, which is generally backwards compatible with the previous 32-bit ARMv7. Not all ARMv8+ devices support both 64-bit and 32-bit execution so its best to check the specifications on a given piece of hardware.

Fedora only supports aarch64 images which run on 64-bit ARMv8 hardware. Aarch64 machines are expected to provide a base level of UEFI support. That support may be baked into the system firmware, or provided by fedora as part of the arm-image-installer's uboot.

Stable Releases

The current stable release for aarch64 can always be found at Get Fedora

Branched Development Release

The repository for current development releases:

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/

Rawhide Rolling Release

Rawhide Installation Tree(aarch64)

https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Server/aarch64/
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/Everything/aarch64/

General Installation instructions for all Releases

Aarch64 SBSA/SBBR, and SystemReady compliant hardware

Machines which conform to the standard system architecture and boot requirements can be installed using normal fedora installation methods. Those methods are documented in the version specific installation instructions here https://docs.fedoraproject.org/.

Arm Image Installer

Note
The examples provided here are from a Fedora 31 host and may need to be adjusted depending on your host environment.

Used to deploy disk images for a limited set of Aarch64 SBCs. Execute the following script as a user with sudo privileges. It will copy the selected disk image and write the appropriate U-Boot for the target hardware platform. Optionally you can also enable and disable SE Linux and remove the root password requirement (allowing log in without completing initial setup). To add a board not listed, simply create a bash scriptlet with the commands needed to copy U-Boot to media and add to the 'boards.d' (/usr/share/arm-image-installer/boards.d) directory.

sudo dnf -y install arm-image-installer

Usage: arm-image-installer <options>

        --image=IMAGE   - xz compressed image file name
        --media=DEVICE  - media device file (/dev/[sdX|mmcblkX])
Optional
        --addconsole    - Add system console kernel parameter for the target
        --addkey        - /path/to/ssh-public-key
        --args          - Optional kernel parameters listed in quotes
        --norootpass    - Remove the root password
        --relabel       - SELinux relabel root filesystem on first boot
        --resizefs      - Resize root filesystem to fill media device
        --showboot      - Show boot messages, removes 'rhgb quiet' from kargs
        --sysrq         - Enable System Request debugging of the kernel
        --target=TARGET - target board for uboot
        -y              - Assumes yes, will not wait for confirmation
Help
        --supported     - List of supported hardware
        --version       - Display version and exit

Example: arm-image-installer --image=Fedora-Rawhide.xz --target=Bananapi --media=/dev/mmcblk0

All available targets are stored in a file called SUPPORTED-BOARDS:

cat /usr/share/doc/arm-image-installer/SUPPORTED-BOARDS

Network Installation

A network installation is a preferred installation method for current Aarch64 hardware targets. In order to begin, you will need to setup the installation server, a guide can be found below:

   https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f36/install-guide/advanced/Network_based_Installations/