01-22-2022, 12:22 PM
From my experience using Debian installer on original Pinebook - the rub is that it fails to correctly partition eMMC, leaving enough space in the beginning (16MiB, IIRC) for U-boot. It then also installs several not strictly necessary packages that IMHO also don't add much value in terms of ease of system management. But most importantly, the installer doesn't do much to actually install U-boot. So, it is possible to install Debian onto eMMC, but you should do your own manual partitioning and you will need to install U-boot manually. For partitioning - in the simplest case you just need a single ext4 partition, but it should start at, IIRC, 16MiB mark to leave enough space on eMMC for U-boot. For U-boot installation - you should be able to install the appropriate package (IIRC `u-boot-rockchip`) after chroot-ing into the newly installed system and read the package's docs (should be in `/usr/share/doc/u-boot-rockchip` or something like that). In the end you'll likely need to run something like `u-boot-install-rockchip /dev/mmcblk1` as root, assuming /dev/mmcblk1 is the device name for your eMMC storage.
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