ARM64 support + Raspbian 64 bit support

[adambutler]

First I’d like to say please excuse my lack of deep understanding here.

I simply wanted to ask the question of if recent developments in Raspbian supporting 64bit OS and the news that VS Code can run on ARM64 helps efforts to get code-server to work on the Raspberry Pi at all?

[nathanrpage97]

I have gotten code-server to run on both balena 64 bit OS and Ubuntu 20.04 for the pi4. So if there are any issues I'd imagine it would be with the new Raspberry Pi OS.

[Merith-TK]

@nathanrpage97 The default raspbian OS download is for armv7

[nathanrpage97]

You are correct that the current OS is for armv7. I assume Adam is talking about the new Raspberry Pi OS which is a 64 bit arm64. Note: It is in beta.

[nhooyr]

You can already run it on the pi with the NPM package. See https://github.com/cdr/code-server/blob/master/doc/install.md#yarn-npm

Also see #1337

[chilcano]

I've created a script to automate the installation on RPi, and here I explain it.
Hope this helps.

[metawops]

I switched my Raspberry Pi 400 to boot up in (kernel) 64 bit mode (added arm_64bit=1 to /boot/config.txt and upgraded to the latest firmware via sudo rpi-update) and this is what I got from the install script:

pi@raspi400:~ $ curl -fsSL https://code-server.dev/install.sh | sh
Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Installing v3.9.0 deb package from GitHub releases.

+ mkdir -p ~/.cache/code-server
+ curl -#fL -o ~/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb.incomplete -C - https://github.com/cdr/code-server/releases/download/v3.9.0/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb
######################################################################## 100.0%##O#- #
+ mv ~/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb.incomplete ~/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb
+ sudo dpkg -i ~/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb
dpkg: error processing archive /home/pi/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb (--install):
 package architecture (arm64) does not match system (armhf)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /home/pi/.cache/code-server/code-server_3.9.0_arm64.deb
pi@raspi400:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspi400 5.10.16-v8+ #1402 SMP PREEMPT Tue Feb 16 14:16:34 GMT 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux
pi@raspi400:~ $

So I guess I'll have to go back to 32 bit and try the npm installation again. Wasn't successful several times, got loads of warnings (node v14.15.5, npm v6.14.11). #sigh

[metawops]

Okay, little update: works now. All the warnings still there during installation but it works nevertheless. Because it's a server I wanted to access it from other machines on my local network but by default it just listens to 127.0.0.1 or localhost, not to the Rasperry Pi's local IP address not to its raspi400.local local domain name. Fixed that by using --host 0.0.0.0 as a commandline switch or editing the config.yaml file accordingly.

[Merith-TK]

This issue is because, Yes, while the PI is now able to run in 64bit exec mode, it doesnt have the 64bit glibc

So anything that is not a statically linked executable, will not run at all.

You can try installing Bedrock Linux on the pi, and running code-server from within a strata that has a 64bit linker however (I have had varrying success with that)