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Fedora 23 Beta for AArch64

The Fedora ARM Team is pleased to announce the release of Fedora 23 Beta for AArch64, ready to run on your next generation servers. Fedora 23 Beta is a game-changer for the Fedora Project, and we think you're going to be very pleased with the results.

Highlights in the Fedora 23 Beta AArch64 Release

Fedora 23 Beta Server

The Fedora Server flavor is a common base platform that is meant to run featured application stacks, which are produced, tested, and distributed by the Server Working Group. Want to use Fedora as a Web server, file server, database server, or platform for an Infrastructure-as-a-Service? Fedora 23 Beta Server is for you.

Fedora Server Management Features

The Fedora Server flavor introduces new Server management features aimed at making it easier to install discrete infrastructure services. The Fedora Server introduces three new technologies to handle this task, rolekit, Cockpit, and OpenLMI.

Rolekit is a Role deployment and management toolkit that provides a consistent interface to administrators to install and configure all the packages needed to implement a specific server role. Rolekit is at an early stage of development in Fedora 23.

Cockpit is a user interface for configuring and monitoring your server or servers. It is accessible remotely via a web browser.

OpenLMI is a remote management system built atop DMTF-CIM. Use OpenLMI for scripting management functions across many machines and for querying for capabilities and monitoring for system events.

Domain Controller Server Role

As part of the server role offerings available for Fedora 23, the Server flavor ships with a role deployment mechanism. One of the roles offered in 23 Beta is the Domain Controller Service.

The Domain Controller Service packages freeIPA's integrated identity and authentication solution for Linux/UNIX networked environments.

A FreeIPA server provides centralized authentication, authorization, and account information by storing data about users, groups, hosts, and other objects necessary to manage the security aspects of a network of computers.

Mirror List

Supported Hardware

  • Applied Micro X-Gene (Mustang)
  • Advanced Micro Devices Opteron A1100 (aka Seattle)

Overview of Hardware Support Status

Hardware ACPI Network USB DVD Display Audio Link Notes
Advanced Micro Devices Opteron A1100 (Seattle)
Pass pass
Pass pass
none
Tested with 74E firmware.
Applied Micro X-Gene (Mustang)
Pass pass
Pass pass
none
none
Tested with APM Tianocore - 1.15.10.
none
none
none
none
none

Network Installation

A network installation is the 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:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/22/html/Installation_Guide/chap-pxe-server-setup.html
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Note
The above documentation references grubx86.efi, but this is the name for x86_64 EFI grub binaries. The grub binary name on AArch64 systems is grubaa64.efi.

Once configured use the Fedora 23 Beta AArch64 installation tree below:

Installation Tree

http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/test/23_Beta/Server/aarch64/os/

Install with QEMU

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Note
You will need to use qemu-2.3.0-4+ for the below to work.

To use Fedora 23 Beta on QEMU you will need to use a build of UEFI that is not hosted by Fedora for licensing reasons. For convenience a dnf|yum repository had been created

sudo curl -o /etc/yum.repos.d/firmware.repo https://www.kraxel.org/repos/firmware.repo
sudo dnf install edk2.git-aarch64 libguestfs-tools-c

To install:

sudo virt-install    \
      --name Fedora_23_Beta_AArch64 --ram 2048 --arch aarch64 \
      --boot loader_ro=yes,loader_type=pflash,loader=/usr/share/edk2.git/aarch64/QEMU_EFI-pflash.raw,nvram_template=/usr/share/edk2.git/aarch64/vars-template-pflash.raw    \
      --disk size=8 --os-variant fedora22   \
      --location https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora-secondary/releases/test/23_Beta/Server/aarch64/os/
*Add kickstart with (root password is 'fedora'):
      --extra-args "inst.ks=https://pwhalen.fedorapeople.org/kickstarts/Fedora-23-Beta-Minimal-AArch64.ks"

For a full list of QEMU installation options and instructions:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/AArch64/Install_with_QEMU

Reported Bugs and Known Issues

  • When using an encrypted partition, "plymouth.enable=0" must be added to the kernel command line. Failure to do so will not allow the passphrase to be entered to unlock the encrypted partition. (BZ#1172740).
  • When performing a PXE boot on an AMD Seattle system, the grub menu is never displayed, and it drops to a grub prompt. It is recommended to use the Fedora 22 BOOTAA64.EFI on the PXE server. (BZ#1251600)
  • Auto-generated 'anaconda.cfg' file contains conflicting commands. Recommended work around is to comment out 'reqpart' command as noted in this example - https://pwhalen.fedorapeople.org/kickstarts/Fedora-23-Beta-Minimal-AArch64.ks . (BZ#255447)