Hey there,
first of all, thank you very much for the hint but that’s not an option for me. It’s just a bpi-r4 lite without active cooling and I don’t want to burn that thing before it even gets to work. 
Second of all, this cross-compiling is a huge PITA… i really underestimated how long it takes… but ok, fair enough, lesson learnt… nothing an ampere cloud server cannot fix .
So that’s the plan:
- taking one of frank-w’s linux kernel and configs (frank-w (Frank Wunderlich) · GitHub)
- compare the config file to ipfire’s… only check the parameters that either have been changed or added in the bpi-kernel. that’s about 465… an afternoon with some cups of coffee and the help of an AI should do it.
- obviously implement the necessary firmware files for mediatek devices.
and then something with the bootloader
it will take some time but it sounds fun… will report back!