This repo contains the code to get NixOS running on LicheePi 4A.

Change the password and SSH settings before exposing the board to any network you do not fully trust.

You can skip this step if you just want to flash the prebuilt image.

Build u-boot:

nix build .#uboot -L --show-trace

After the build is complete, the u-boot will be in result/u-boot-with-spl.bin, please copy it to another place for later use.

Build sdImage:

nix build .#sdImage -L --show-trace

After the build is complete, the image will be in result/sd-image/nixos-licheepi4a-sd-image-xxx-riscv64-linux.img.

Official Docs: https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/lichee/th1520/lpi4a/4_burn_image.html

According to the official docs, the flash process of LicheePi 4A is as follows:

1. Press and hold the BOOT button on the board, then plug in the USB-C cable to power on (the other end of the cable is connected to the PC), and you can enter the USB burning mode (fastboot).
   1. the command lsusb | grep T-HEAD should print ID 2345:7654 T-HEAD USB download gadget
2. Then use the following command to flash the image into the board's eMMC.
   1. The fastboot program can be downloaded directly from Android Platform Tools, or installed from the package manager.

So first, download the prebuilt u-boot-with-spl.bin & nixos-licheepi4a-sd-image-xxx-riscv64-linux.img.tar.zst from releases, or build them by yourself.

Then, flash into the board's spl partition and uboot partition:

# flash u-boot into spl partition
sudo fastboot flash ram u-boot-with-spl.bin
sudo fastboot reboot
# flash uboot partition
sudo fastboot flash uboot u-boot-with-spl.bin

Finally, flash boot & rootfs into SD card:

$ scripts/flash_sd.sh

Now insert the SD card into the board, and power on, you should see NixOS booting.

Due to the problem of the image, you need to resize the rootfs manually after the first boot.

To flash the image into the board's eMMC, you need to flash the image into the SD Card and boot into NixOS via it first.

Then, use the following command to flash the image into the board's eMMC:

# upload the sdImage to the NixOS system on the board
scp nixos-lp4a.img user@<ip-of-your-board>:~/

# login to the board via ssh or serial port
ssh user@<ip-of-your-board>

# check all the block devices
# you should see mmcblk0(eMMC) & mmcblk1(SD card)
$ lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk0      179:0    0  29.1G  0 disk 
├─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0   240M  0 part 
└─mmcblk0p2  179:2    0   1.6G  0 part 
mmcblk0boot0 179:8    0     4M  1 disk 
mmcblk0boot1 179:16   0     4M  1 disk 
mmcblk1      179:24   0 117.8G  0 disk 
├─mmcblk1p1  179:25   0   200M  0 part 
└─mmcblk1p2  179:26   0 117.5G  0 part /nix/store
                                       /

# flash the image into the board's eMMC
sudo dd if=nixos-lp4a.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress

After the flash is complete, remove the SD card and reboot, you should see NixOS booting from eMMC.

Due to the problem of the image, you need to resize the rootfs manually after the first boot.

• Fix the sdImage file size.
• Fix sdImage auto-resizing after the first boot.
• Verify all hardware features available on the TH1520.
  • Bluetooth
  • Audio
  • GPU
  • NPU
    • No one seems to have done any work related to the TH1520's NPU, and even the LicheePi 4A official docs do not contain any relevant content, only a TODO.

This branch uses RevyOS's revyos/linux revyos/7.0.y kernel together with the latest available TH1520 U-Boot, OpenSBI and boot firmware pins from RevyOS.

The flake input also tracks nixos-unstable.

By default, this repo uses the thead/th1520-lichee-pi-4a-16g.dtb device tree. If your board is not the 16G variant, change hardware.deviceTree.name in modules/licheepi4a.nix back to thead/th1520-lichee-pi-4a.dtb.

See Debug.md

The default image is a minimal NixOS system, which may not include all the applications you need.

You can clone this repository and modify modules/licheepi4a.nix to add your desired applications and configurations, and, follow the steps in Build u-boot & sdImage to build your custom image. Then, you can flash it into your SD card or eMMC as described in Flash into SD card and Flash into eMMC.

Also, you can flash the default image and then modify the configuration on the board directly, you're able to use nixos-rebuild switch to apply your changes as a normal NixOS system, but this can be slow due to the limited resources of the board.

As an alternative, you can also use remote deployment to deploy your custom configuration to the board without re-building or re-flashing the image, this will keep your filesystem (e.g. /home/user) intact.

Here is an example configuration that you can use as a starting point: Demo - Deployment

LicheePi 4A use RevyOS officially. The basic idea of this repo is to use revyos's kernel, u-boot and opensbi, with a NixOS rootfs, to get NixOS running on LicheePi 4A.

RevyOS's kernel, u-boot and opensbi:

• https://github.com/revyos/linux.git
• https://github.com/revyos/thead-u-boot.git
• https://github.com/revyos/thead-opensbi.git

And other efforts to bring Fedora to LicheePi 4A:

• https://github.com/chainsx/fedora-riscv-builder

And other efforts to bring NixOS to RISC-V:

• https://github.com/zhaofengli/nixos-riscv64
• https://github.com/NickCao/nixos-riscv

Special thanks to @NickCao, @revyos, @chainsx and @zhaofengli.