GPD Pocket

This article Article description::provides instructions on getting Gentoo operational on the GPD Pocket.

The GPD Pocket is a 7" UMPC manufactured by Game Park Digital running an Intel Atom x7-Z8750 and 8 GB RAM. Lots of work has already been done on getting the kernel to work out of the box by Hans de Goede.

Hardware
The GPD Pocket contains the following hardware, the kernel should be configured to include drivers for all these items:

I recommend compiling all these as modules they can then be tested in the normal way. Be careful of the Keyboard support though!

Kernel
This is the most complex step but you can avoid the pain by downloading the pre-built kernel from https://github.com/joshskidmore/gpd-pocket-arch-guide. A kernel can be compiled from gentoo-sources in portage, a working configuration can be found on Hans de Goede's github linux-sunxi config (I can confirm that gentoo-sources-4.16.0 works). Also, gentoo-sources-4.16.0 contains the GPD Pocket fan driver.

Copy the file from Hans de Goede's GitHub repository https://github.com/jwrdegoede/linux-sunxi into the  directory.

This change to the linux-sunxi file should help with a funny sound driver problem:

The new kernel is available under and the new modules in

Creating an EFI-capable bootable USB drive
Use to create a new GPT partition table on the USB Stick. The partition table must be UEFI or the BIOS will not be able to read the boot loader files.

An EFI System partition is just a FAT32 partition, to set up the partition you may need to install :

Mount the drive and make the UEFI boot directories:

Create a Linux root file system on :

Download and extract a stage 3 onto (alter the mirror and date to flavor):

Edit the and  files so that you can login.

Installing a bootloader
SYSLINUX will be used to boot the kernel, if syslinux is not installed on the system, do it now:

Copy the required binaries to the USB drive:

Create the syslinux configuration file:

The kernel and the RAM disk will be created next

Kernel and Initial RAM Disk
Creating a custom  is explained here to allow access to the GPD Pocket internal eMMC flash and access to the USB stick that the root fs is installed on some modules must be available in the initramfs:

These files can be copied from the kernel modules directory when a kernel is compiled with the Hans de Goede (or Fedora) settings.

The newly created initramfs and kernel should be copied to the EFI partition:

Booting to the USB drive
To boot to the USB drive insert the drive into the GPD Pocket's USB socket and press F7 when the GPD Pocket is starting up (that means hold down the key and press  a few times when you power up).

You should be presented with a list of startup options, one of which should be the name of your USB drive, select that one and syslinux should start and then boot the kernel and execute the initramfs.