Arch Linux is so light that I think might be the best option for old Cubieboard2 single board, so I followed the Archlinux installation instruction and get it working.

No Sound - ALSA problem

After ssh alarm@192.168.1.5 and enter password “alarm”, then change to root by su - with password “root”, I found everything is fine except the sound.

So add user alarm to group “audio”:

usermod -a -G audio alarm

Then type exit to back to user “alarm”

[jazzi@alarm ~]$ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=sun4icodec
    sun4i-codec, CDC PCM Codec-0
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=sun4icodec
    sun4i-codec, CDC PCM Codec-0
    Default Audio Device

Above output means the audio card driver is loaded and found by ALSA.

Then install a tool package:

pacman -S alsa-utils

After that you can set the sound:

[jazzi@alarm ~]$ alsamixer
Card: sun4i-codec
Use left and right arrow to choose the item and unmute all items by stroke M

Remember to unmute all items

I ever encountered below errors:

[jazzi@alarm ~]$ aplay /usr/share/sound/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
Playing WAVE 'Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
aplay: pcm_write:2146: write error: Input/output error

Finally the problem is one item named “Right Mixer Right DAC” is muted, unmute it solved the problem.

Configure the system

  1. Add user alarm to sudoer by visudo after package “sudo” installed
  2. Add SSH Key to the server by run command in client side ssh-copy-id alarm@192.168.1.5 and copy this key to root by sudo cp .ssh/authorized_keys /root/.ssh
  3. Now you can login as root to change user name usermode -l jazzi -d /home/jazzi -m alarm and group name groupmod -n jazzi alarm, actually it’s all about /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/shadow and /home/alarm
  4. Set the mirror by edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and add server Server = https://mirrors.bfsu.edu.cn/archlinuxarm/$arch/$repo
  5. Edit file /etc/locale.gen and uncomment en_US-UTF8 then run locale-gen and localectl set-locale en_US.UTF8
  6. Set timezone by run timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Shanghai
  7. Add user jazzi to group audio by usermod -a -G audio jazzi
  8. Add user jazzi to sudoer by visudo after package “sudo” installed