ARM ESXi on Firefly StationPC M2

[ruchre]

Hi all,

I just received the Firefly StationPC M2, which uses the RockChip RK3566 board an shows as supported for ARM ESXi.
I already enabled the bootloader for this device and managed to install the ROC-RK3566 EFI image to an TFCard as described here using the pre-compiled image and it shows as boot device in the bootloader.
But I am unable to load the ARM ESXi installer USB key I created using balenaEtcher.
It won't load the ARM ESXi installer.
Can someone please guide me into the right direction?
William states in a post here that you should look at the PINE64 instructions. Do I have to use a serial console for the installation?
What am I missing?

Thanks and regards!

[ruchre]

Hi all,

a short update on this:
I managed to access the RK3566 board over serial console.
Following this guide, I was able to create the bootable SD card.
When I boot the device, I can select the TF Card as boot device:

But after that, I get the following error:

Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

[ruchre]

Another Update:

So it looks like the device is booting fine and detecting the USB stick:

But it seems unable to boot from the USB Stick:

I re-downloaded the VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-22949429.aarch64.iso file and wrote it again to a blank USB stick using BalenaEtcher.

What am I missing?

[claplace]

Hi, the main issue I see here is that your M2 is not booting the EFI bootloader. Instead there is an Android based something that shouldn't have been loaded at all.

Can you re-try the very first step of installing the EFI on the micro SD card?

You shouldn't even have to choose it as the boot device. Just insert and poweron.

[ruchre]

Hey claplace,

thanks for your response.
You are right, the Firefly StationPC M2 by default ships with a Station OS (Android based) installation on the internal eMMC storage.
I took the prebuild ROC-RK3566-PC_EFI.img UEFI image and wrote it using balenaEtcher as stated in the guide:

In order to have the board booting in UEFI, the firmware has to be located in one of the supported boot devices. If the device (SD card, eMMC) are removable, the easiest way is to use dd,  Etcher, etc. to write the appropriate .img file to the device.

After inserting the SD card into the device, it ist not booting automatically from it, I have to choose it in the bootloader.
Should it load differently?
Is there any difference from writing the .img file to the SD card between using etcher or dd under Linux?
I just flashed it again and don't see any difference in the boot process.

I can't find any official documentation on how to install ESXi ARM on this device. But it shows as supported, so someone must have been able to install it.

[ruchre]

Hi all!

any advice on this?
It looks like the M2 is ignoring the SD card with the EDK2 UEFI and still loading some Android stuff, maybe related to Station OS.
Do I have to flash or enable something else first?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks and regards

[ruchre]

Hi all!

after some digging, I found the issue by myself.
By default, StationOS is on the internal eMMC. If this is the case, SD card WILL NOT BOOT without Multi Boot enabled.
So I disabled the bootloader again and now it is working.
The Firefly documentation explains it quite well:

https://wiki.stationpc.com/docs/stationpc/systembootloader

Hope this helps someone else!

[Cyprien Laplace]

Thanks for the info!

That's something I was not aware. Maybe I got my Station M2s before that firmware update.

[ruchre]

Hey cyprienlaplace!

After installing UEFI on the SD card, I booted the ESXi Arm installer from the USB stick and installed it on another one.
But the question now is:
How are you dealing with storage on your M2s?

It looks like the eMMC ist currently not supported.
So I installed a Transcend 128 GB 2242 NVMe SSD I had lying around, but ESXi is not seeing it.
The 1.12 refresh notes states the following:

NVMe

• Support for NVMe on non-cache coherent PCIe root complexes (e.g. Rockchip RK3566 systems like Pine64 Quartz64 and Firefly Station M2)

So for my understanding, it should work.
Did you managed to get it working?

Thanks and regards

[Cyprien Laplace]

Hi,

With ESXi on the SD card, it will boot thanks to the UEFI boot services to be able to load from the SD card, but ESXi itself does not have a driver for the SD card and won't be able to save any change of state/configuration, or do any update.

On the NVMe front, can you check if UEFI is able to see your device?

Cheers,
Cyprien

[ruchre]

Hi ,

Yes, I noticed that after booting into ESXi. It was in read-only mode, so I re-installed it using a second USB stick and corrected my post.

In UEFI I currently see the following devices:

I have ACPI + Devicetree enabled.

Are you using and seeing the NVMe?
What UEFI are you using?

Best regards

[ruchre]

Hey @Cyprien Laplace,

that VMware to Broadcom migration took long and did not let me post anymore.
Could you please share your configuration and versions?

How did you managed to get the NVMe drive and eMMC working?

Thanks and regards!

[Cyprien Laplace]

Hi! yeah the forum was put in read-only...

So I am not using the eMMC at all, and I know not all NVMe devices work. My current guess is that the M2 socket is missing the 32kHz signal.

I will get back with the NVMe model I have, I don't have access to it at the moment.