Ubuntu 24.10 StarFive VisionFive 2 AMDGPU

Ubuntu 24.10 is using the 6.11 kernel. This has the PCI-e controller of StarFive VisionFive 2 + AMDGPU drivers that are working with RISC-V. So if you have a m2 to pci-e adapter you can now run Ubuntu with AMDGPU on RISC-V (without building your own kernel with patches etc.)

The only problem is now the u-boot that initialize the PCI-e controller to scan for m.2 drivers. Some of my AMDPGU do not like that (fan 100% and not detected anymore in the kernel).

So we need a u-boot (from Ubuntu) without the initialization of the PCI-e controller. I have build that and release the flash-files (u-boot + opensbi) on github.

So we can now just flash Ubuntu 24.10 to an eMMC, use the custom flash-files (u-boot + opensbi).

a lot of AMDGPU’s worked on this setup:

ATI Radeon HD 5450 (Cedar PRO)
ATI Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress PRO)
AMD Radeon R9 290 (Hawaii PRO)
AMD Radeon R9 290X (Hawaii XT)

not working:

AMD Radeon RX 6600 (Navi 23 XL)

It is booting, it gives screenoutput (black) and then the system hangs completely

Flash Ubuntu 24.10 to eMMC

download from the site the image 24.10.

I used “balenaEtcher” to flash this to my eMMC (with an USB to eMMC adapter).

Create/download u-boot without PCI-e initialization and flash to SD

We need a custom u-boot that will not try to initialize the PCI-e controller (scan for m.2 device). Some of the AMDGPU’s don’t like that (fan 100% and not detected anymore in the kernel)

So on build we need to set CONFIG_PCI_INIT_R and CONFIG_CMD_PCI to n (no).

I all ready create this builds and they can be found here:

Insert you SD-card in you computer

wget https://github.com/Opvolger/ansible-riscv-sd-card-creater/releases/download/0.1.0/release.tgz
tar -xvzf release.tgz
# check where your SD-card is with lsblk, in this example it is /dev/sdb
# delete MBR of SD-Card
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 conv=notrunc
# we will create the needed partitions to boot from SD-card
sudo sgdisk --clear \
    --set-alignment=2 \
    --new=1:4096:8191 --change-name=1:spl --typecode=1:2E54B353-1271-4842-806F-E436D6AF6985 \
    --new=2:8192:16383 --change-name=2:uboot --typecode=2:BC13C2FF-59E6-4262-A352-B275FD6F7172 \
    /dev/sdb
# now "flash" the firmware on the sd-card
sudo dd if=release/ubuntu-24-10/u-boot-spl.bin.normal.out of=/dev/sdb1
sudo dd if=release/ubuntu-24-10/u-boot.itb of=/dev/sdb2

If booting ubuntu is not working (you can see it with serial-connection for example screen -L /dev/ttyUSB0 115200), go back to default settings in u-boot with:

how to set the default is explained also in the ubuntu site. The only different is that I am using the sd-card and not the onboard flash.

StarFive #

env default -f -a
env save

Reboot you board (power off/on)

First boot Ubuntu

sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Amsterdam
# check if the date is correct (now)!
date
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
# add repo for firefox
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
# install what default stuff + install kde + firefox + some c dev tools (so you can compile some stuff)
sudo apt install software-properties-common cmake cabextract sddm sddm-theme-breeze kde-standard build-essential libxml2 libcurl4-gnutls-dev neofetch ubuntu-dev-tools libopenal-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev libsdl2-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libedit-dev python-is-python3 m4 clang sddm-theme-breeze firefox

I did get a configuration i had to fill in: Please enter the default mirror you want to be used by pbuilder. I hit enter and get the question again, so i filled in: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu and it was installing again.

# now reboot
sudo reboot

Done

You will now see a KDE desktop login! Good luck and have fun!

- Ubuntu 24.10 StarFive VisionFive 2 AMDGPU