Slackware ARM on a Raspberry Pi 3 - SARPi3
 

The Slackware ARM on a Raspberry Pi 3 - SARPi3 installer, system packages, and HOW-TO guide are now available.

http://rpi3.fatdog.eu

Within the guide there are certain references to Slackware ARM 14.2, but as that hasn´t yet been released so please work around that for now. Just until 14.2 is released and then it will all be relevant. I just wanted to save having to edit the guide a second time with 14.2 being close to a release date. (Hope these aren´t my famous last words!)

As always, let me know if you find any errors/mistakes/bugs/etc.

Cheers! :thumbsup: ;)

slackware-arm-on-a-raspberry-pi-3-sarpi3
 

Good work. Doing it now

Rgds

Mike

Awesome, thanks! Have one arriving this week; will be giving this a shot. :D

Worked like a dream apart from the wifi.
I expected that and it's working fine now.

Thanks

Mike

You´re most welcome.

I toyed with the notion of adding the rpi3 wi-fi drivers but then if it´s not in the official Slackware ARM tree then it´s not going to be included in the SARPi3 installer either. Adding the wireless and bluetooth drivers can be a ´learning-curve´ for those who are interested. :-p

Glad it´s working fine for you. If I may be so bold, I´d say this was the best work we´ve done yet on the SARPi projects.

How do you get Bluetooth working on the Raspberry Pi 3? I couldn't find a mention of it on sarpi.co.uk, and isn't working for me. Is rpi-update required?

I am running slackware-current:
uname -r
4.14.31-v7-arm

lsmod
Module Size Used by
ipv6 434176 28
8021q 32768 0
garp 16384 1 8021q
stp 16384 1 garp
llc 16384 2 garp,stp
fuse 106496 1
dm_mod 122880 0
dax 24576 1 dm_mod
brcmfmac 307200 0
brcmutil 16384 1 brcmfmac
cfg80211 569344 1 brcmfmac
rfkill 28672 1 cfg80211
uio_pdrv_genirq 16384 0
uio 20480 1 uio_pdrv_genirq
fixed 16384 0

Try this URL: Pi3 onboard wifi and Bluetooth

Hope it helps. ;)

@Penthux thanks for the link. It took some time to figure everything out for the device. Following are instructions for setting this up for anyone else interested.

# Download firmware into the /etc/firmware directory (not /lib/firmware). You will have to find the firmware via a search engine.
mkdir /etc/firmware
wget $URL/BCM43430A1.hcd -O /etc/firmware/BCM43430A1.hcd

# Load the firmware automagically when starting bluetooth. I've added a 30 second delay for stability as the command occasionally timeout.
>>/etc/bluetooth/uart.conf echo "-t 30 /dev/ttyAMA0 bcm43xx"

# Comment out the line for ttyAMA0 to free it from being used for a terminal (?).
nano /etc/inittab

# Modify rc.bluetooth so the firmware is loaded _before_ bringing up the device.
# This seems like it _may_ be a bug in Slackware's bluetooth script.
#
# In start(), move 'start_uarts' before 'start_hci_dev'
#
nano /etc/rc.d/rc.bluetooth

# Enable bluetooth on start
chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.bluetooth

# Load the bluetooth module. This creates /sys/class/bluetooth/ which rc.bluetooth needs to run.
>>/etc/rc.d/rc.modules.local echo "/sbin/modprobe bluetooth"

# In order to get performance required for streaming audio through the device, wifi
# needs to be disabled.
# To do this modify and insert "dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi" into /boot/config.txt
# Make sure /boot is mounted! I've made this mistake myself... otherwise the wrong file is being modified.
nano /boot/config.txt

# Reboot ;)
reboot

One nuisance with this setup though is restarting bluetooth during runtime will not work. Not sure why, but hciattach can only
be run at most once.

References:
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Ra...g_Up_Bluetooth
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.co...-on-pi-3#62522
http://forum.fatdog.eu/viewtopic.php?t=168#p487

edited: Added part about loading bluetooth module

You are most welcome. Glad you were able to find a solution.

I love it when people, much like your good self, do what you do and are successful in doing it. That's what Slackware [ARM] is all about for me personally; learning and growing in knowledge and experience. Well done. Nice work. :hattip:

Thanks for the short recipe and letting me know about the issues with the BT/WiFi. I'm about to bite the bullet and start buying (again) Pi3 boards for my needs (hopefully I can manage to cool/underclock them), since Pi2Bv1.1 ones are not available anymore, and constantly looking for info/knowledge about them, your guide is really helpful.

I suppose you can extract the required BT firmware form the Raspbian image instead of searching the Internet for it, by following louigi600's instructions (first section from the Manual installation method):
https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...rm:raspberrypi
Why do you need to put it in /etc/firmware? I have it already available in /lib/firmware (I'm extracting all the useful stuff from the Raspbian image).

There's also something I'm not sure about, is the bcm43xx driver actually recommended for usage? I've looked over at the official Raspberry Forums and learned that btbcm is being used:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/v...8145&start=125

Here's a short investigation I did on a Pi board on which I took the kernel&modules&firmware&other useful stuff from a Raspbian image:
The official thread about the BT-Wifi issues - still unresolved - I didn't know about this until now - weird:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1402

The btbcm driver is used under the hood. 'bcm43xx' refers to the device ;).

I've had to correct the configuration since my last post. On some Rasp Pi 3's, the default baud rate is too high for the device to handle. Therefor, I've needed to set it to '460800' on load.

Thanks for the clarification.