L4T Ubuntu
​

Intro
L4T Ubuntu is a version of Linux based on nvidia's linux for tegra project. It uses a different kernel compared to previous releases which allows it to use features not yet in mainline. Such as audio, docking support and vulkan.

Join our discord: https://discord.gg/53mtKYt

We have a wiki !
To facilitate our work we will only update our wiki from now on in order to avoid multiple outdated references, please refer to the following link instead of this page
https://wiki.switchroot.org/en/Linux/Ubuntu-Install-Guide

Credits
Bylaws,
Langerhans,
Ave,
Natinusala,
CTCaer(most of the hard stuff),
Gavin_Darkglider,
DanielOgorchock(Joycon drivers/joycond),
stary2001 (reboot2payload),
NVIDIA,
Azkali
Everyone else in switchroot - more info on that in the future.

 

[Qubarf]

@Gavin_Darkglider You should really help the switchroot team with android.
They are absolutely stumped on figuring out why the GPU hangs after waking from deep sleep
With your expertise I am sure we could all expect a release earlier that 2020

(I mean you are literally the only 3rd party person who managed to actually build coreboot and then actually go out of your way to help others to build it, thx!)

 

[Deleted-172301]

Is there a way to increase the scaling of the UI? I was able to max it at 1.25, but I don't think that's enough.

 

[Gavin_Darkglider]

@Gavin_Darkglider You should really help the switchroot team with android.
They are absolutely stumped on figuring out why the GPU hangs after waking from deep sleep
With your expertise I am sure we could all expect a release earlier that 2020

(I mean you are literally the only 3rd party person who managed to actually build coreboot and then actually go out of your way to help others to build it, thx!)

Working your way through build issues, and writing code for a platform you dont fully understand are 2 different things(The chip in the switch is a modified t210 for nintendo, and doesnt follow the spec in the data sheet completly, if it did, there wouldnt be much of a need for development, as the t210 is already supported in coreboot for smaug, and jetson boards). For what it is worth I am on discord with switchroot(Finally, as the first invite that @bylaws sent me 2 months ago didnt work), and should have the new android test build soon enough. That being said, my passion has always been linux, so l4t ubuntu was more exciting to me than android. The main reason why I have been working on this, is because I am in the process of porting gentoo to the switch, with the help of bell07, who had the same goal, after I figured out most of this stuff. As for the boot chain, I am still working on getting linux to drop to lp0 on sleep, instead of s2idle, which is currently used. I think I forgot to revert the psci patch in the kernel(lol) Something to do today though. As for Android it was just posted 10(or so) minutes ago on the switchroot twitter feed to expect the first android release in the next 5 days, so there is really no point in me spending that time reinventing that wheel. lol. On discord, they are trying to decide the best way to release, since there is still the bug with lp0, I think the idea is to release with s2idle, like l4t ubuntu for now. It also takes a bit more setup to get everything working on the sdcard, hince the altos installer that is also being worked on right now.

 

[bitteorca]

EDIT:
tony@tony-nx:~/PCemV15Linux$ ./pcem

Set fullspeed - 0 0 0
dbus[7594]: arguments to dbus_message_new_method_call() were incorrect, assertion "path != NULL" failed in file ../../../dbus/dbus-message.c line 1362. This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.​

D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace Aborted (core dumped)​

I was getting a d_bus error but it turns out to be an issue with SDL2 for ubuntu 18.0.4

to fix,

sudo killall ibus-daemon

 

[Gavin_Darkglider]

Switchroot Android has dropped. Get links here:https://forum.xda-developers.com/ni...opment/rom-switchroot-lineageos-15-1-t3951389

 

[spotanjo3]

Switchroot Android has dropped. Get links here:https://forum.xda-developers.com/ni...opment/rom-switchroot-lineageos-15-1-t3951389

Thanks for the news.. Does Android require linux to make it work ? Not sure.

And I will wait until it is greatly improvement, thought.

 

[Gavin_Darkglider]

Thanks for the news.. Does Android require linux to make it work ? Not sure.

And I will wait until it is greatly improvement, thought.

Android has always required a modified version of linux kernel, so not sure what you mean. If you need l4t-ubuntu to run android, then no, you need an extra sdcard though, as the partition table is not standard, but a hybrid gpt/mbr mix.

 

[skittletop]

Anyone get vnc working?

I followed the instructions in the README-vnc.txt that pops up when connecting to USB.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Installing the VNC Server
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It is expected that the VNC server software is pre-installed. Execute the
following commands to ensure that it is:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install vino

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Enabling the VNC Server
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Execute the following commands to enable the VNC server:

# Inform the system which graphic display to interact with
export DISPLAY=:0
# Enable the VNC server
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino enabled true
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino prompt-enabled false
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false
# Reboot the system so that the settings take effect
sudo reboot

The gsettings set org.gnome.Vino enabled true, give the error - No such key “enabled”

So I'm guessing the VNC server isn't running, and hence my VNC viewer can't connect.

 

[Alkéryn]

Dolphin runs decently. Running cemu isn’t possible

You can run CEMU in a qemu x86 chroot

 

[hippy dave]

You can run CEMU in a qemu x86 chroot

Really slowly?

 

[Alkéryn]

Really slowly?

You'll lose between 0% and 50% of your speed on the cpu, the gpu is unnafected
you also have box86 that does something similar but might be easier to use for a novice

Well i'm not sure about cemu specifically but you can run x86 software on the switch or any arm devieces for that matter
anyway cemu would be really slow, it is already on pc

 

[PokOeLe]

Can someone help and tell me witch SD card is using to boot L4T? I've tried many and I've always failed.
I would like to buy another SD card that I'm sure it will boot.

 

[NotABicycle]

Anyone else having issues getting it to boot? I've tried everything I can, but I can't get it to enter the setup menu at all, whatsoever. I've tried with/without updates, different programs, and have cleaned the card and allocated new partitions multiple times and I haven't had it boot up once. The closest (farthest?) I've gotten was getting it to reboot back into RCM automatically from the blank screen, and had the backlight turn completely off once. I don't have any other 16gb+ SD cards to test it with right now, I lack the knowledge/tools to try and build it myself, and I'm completely stumped as what else to try other than keep rebooting. Help will be appreciated.

 

[MK73DS]

Anyone else having issues getting it to boot? I've tried everything I can, but I can't get it to enter the setup menu at all, whatsoever. I've tried with/without updates, different programs, and have cleaned the card and allocated new partitions multiple times and I haven't had it boot up once. The closest (farthest?) I've gotten was getting it to reboot back into RCM automatically from the blank screen, and had the backlight turn completely off once. I don't have any other 16gb+ SD cards to test it with right now, I lack the knowledge/tools to try and build it myself, and I'm completely stumped as what else to try other than keep rebooting. Help will be appreciated.

Same for me here, I also tried with 3 different microSD card (2 different brands) with no luck

 

[PokOeLe]

@NotABicycle @MK73DS Digging into the problem I've read that the v.5.0 of Heckate had a problem in booting L4T Ubuntu . This was solved with the new version.
The super strange thing is that I have no problem at all in booting the new Android for Switch, that has a similar set up of the SD and coreboot so... It's not my SD CARD!
What about you? did you try? Can you boot Lakka L4T ?

Lakka L4T - NO
Older version of Lakka - OK
L4T Ubuntu - NO
Android - Ok

 

[parkerlreed]

One thing I've noticed is that if you reboot into Hekate from Hekate or from Horizon, there's a good chance of the Ubuntu/Android boot bailing to black screen. I have to make sure to completely power off (cold boot) and then load Hekate for it to work reliably.

 

[MK73DS]

@NotABicycle @MK73DS Digging into the problem I've read that the v.5.0 of Heckate had a problem in booting L4T Ubuntu . This was solved with the new version.
The super strange thing is that I have no problem at all in booting the new Android for Switch, that has a similar set up of the SD and coreboot so... It's not my SD CARD!
What about you? did you try? Can you boot Lakka L4T ?

Lakka L4T - NO
Older version of Lakka - OK
L4T Ubuntu - NO
Android - Ok

Which new version ? 5.0.1 is still the last update.
I also can boot Android but not L4T

 

[NotABicycle]

@NotABicycle @MK73DS Digging into the problem I've read that the v.5.0 of Heckate had a problem in booting L4T Ubuntu . This was solved with the new version.
The super strange thing is that I have no problem at all in booting the new Android for Switch, that has a similar set up of the SD and coreboot so... It's not my SD CARD!
What about you? did you try? Can you boot Lakka L4T ?

Lakka L4T - NO
Older version of Lakka - OK
L4T Ubuntu - NO
Android - Ok

I got Switchroot Android to work without problems, but then tried L4T Lakka and it had numerous problems. It booted and some emulators worked, but after a couple minutes each time it would crash and boot back to the retroarch screen. I cleaned/formatted my SD card and tried v4.10.1 of Hekate to try to inject the L4T Ubuntu payload, but still no luck.

Edit: I rebooted a couple times, got an error message, and it booted to the login screen, so I guess I could say it worked. Still not able to enter the setup screen, but I'm gonna keep rebooting and see if I can get it to work.

Edit 2: Still no luck. Continues to go to black screen after selecting L4T ;-;

Edit 3 (Last one probably): Tried a different SD card with same results, other than the fact that now the fan spins very fast, very audibly when I try to boot L4T.

 

[catball]

Hi OP,

Thanks for the guide! Could you please post a SHA256 and/or MD5 checksum for the SD card images and updates? This helps users make sure the entire file downloaded correctly (especially for flaky connections where you have to resume / retry the download due to hiccups). It also helps curb MITM attacks somewhat.

Thanks!
catball

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

try using the dtb from l4t update 1.3. I couldnt get the dtb to work, until i rebuilt the bootchain with the latest sources. something changed in the dtb source for android I think that wasnt supported in coreboot before.

Ok, I think I know mostly what I'm doing but my Image still isn't booting. I couldn't find the exact firmware online but found a similar .hcd on GitHub. Dug through the Switchroot Image binary and found the bundled firmware images (by searching for strings in the similar binaries I found, looking for matching start/end bytes, and cutting them out of the Image). I think I have all the firmware. I built my kernel with the extra firmware directory pointing to a folder in my home directory with my extracted files. I did modules_install and copied the Image to the 500MB partition in l4t-ubuntu-custom (made a second Hekate ini so I could boot my kernel or official switchroot kernel). Updated boot.scr, kept original dtb. My image turns the screen backlight on for a minute or so before it turns off. Bluetooth does not appear to connect and no actual image on the screen. File sizes are also slightly different between official Image and my build. I'm building on the Switch with the default compiler if that matters.