Arm/aarch64 Ubuntu using Ubuntu Mate image building process

Support & Help Requests Raspberry Pi
#1

I know it’s unrelated, but I sincerely hope that UM developers can help me all the same.

I need to run a web service on Pi 3, but the problem is its stable version has some 64-bit dependencies. I did make it somewhat run in a hacky sort of way with both development and stable portions, but it’s buggy all the same. I’m currently running it on Ubuntu Mate because I also need WiFi.

Because of the 64-bit dependency, I was researching if I could hack my way into Ubuntu Core bypassing the console-config or whatever that does the SSO login, but looking at the official image’s model assertion JSON, the arch is defined to be the 32-bit armhf.

I’m at a loss here. I need to run 64-bit and access the full repos of either CentOS, Debian or Ubuntu.

That’s why I’m here to ask: what’s Ubuntu Mate’s image building process and if I can use it to create bootable image of Ubuntu Server that can access Ubuntu’s arm64 repos.

#2

In my experience it does not take too many steps to modify the standard Ubuntu MATE Xenial image to support arm64 executables. I wrote out some instructions for swapping the kernel here.

As you mention there are also alternatives to MATE such as 64-bit Debian or Gentoo that are supported on a Pi 3.

#3

Thank you for your response! Can the UM bootloader (and WiFi firmware) be adapted to generate a Ubuntu Server image? I’m using MATE as a last resort, and since I’m using it as a server, obviously the GUI and other things are completely unnecessary.

I’ve seen the pi64 project, but I don’t know to what extent it’s modified vanilla Debian, so I’m worried the Pi will eventually get screwed if what appears to be a personal project ends.

Would love to use Gentoo, except the installation script doesn’t support it. It really has a ■■■■ ton of dependencies and configurations. Maybe an Ubuntu docker or some container solution would work.

#4

I think Ubuntu Server for Pi (specifically ubuntu-core-16-pi3.img.xz) might already be using the same bootloader? After all Ubuntu MATE is just using the Raspbian bootloader. On top of the bootloader you still need a whole 64-bit kernel though, which is why I borrow the one from Pi64.

If you want to get rid of the GUI on Ubuntu MATE, run sudo apt remove ubuntu-desktop. However, if you don’t need a GUI then you could probably skip the part of modifying Ubuntu MATE and just work on the Pi64 system image directly.

I don’t see an obvious solution for the limited support. In your situation I would set a flow up such that it could be readily migrated to Debian arm64 Raspberry Pi once debian.org hosts an official image, whether that’s months or years down the road.