10-04-2021, 05:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-05-2021, 01:28 PM by vajak.
Edit Reason: added new download link
)
As already mentioned elsewhere thanks to Daniel Thompson's excellent pinebook-pro-debian-installer as intermediate stepping stone i was able to get a full Debian/unstable running, including Debian kernels 5.10 and latest 5.14.0-2 (as of today).
The system has been installed on a 512GB Sabrent Rock Nano NVME drive and in a second step also on the internal eMMC storage. The latter is mainly used to host the /boot partition components needed to start up the system on the NVME drive. With the exception of the /boot partition, both systems have the root partition, swap and everything else running on a LUKS encrypted LVM. This works well enough for me to use as a daily driver on the road.
In addtion to all the above described i also created a full minimal Debian/unstable system with almost the same features on an 8GB SD card. The installation is fairly basic but with lots of excellent CLI utilities that might be handy as a rescue system to fix broken installations. So if you are an experienced Linux user accustomed to mainly work on the command line, then this might be the right tool for you.
The folder /root/mrfixit_u-boot/ contains Mr.Fixit's u-boot update files which might be useful to restore a broken u-boot with sdcard boot capabilities on the eMMC. It has LVM and cryptsetup installed to be able to externally manage encrypted LVM volumes. The system is using 50% of the supplied RAM as zram based swap.
The default GUI is using Window Maker and is largely based on components formerly provided by the now dormant Window Maker Live project (by yours truly). Don't be surprised about the two terminal windows running a screen session when you login. Here is a first visual impression of what to expect: i.imgur.com/59s2a1e.png.
For people preferring a more traditional desktop there is the option to switch to XFCE4 instead, which provides it's components also in the Window Maker desktop.
The graphical login manager is wmlive-gdm, a fork of the old GTK2 based gdm version 2.20.11, which was the last release still providing usable XDMCP capabilities. The XDMCP capabilities are the main reason why i still favour it over lighdm. Since the gdm is probably subject to bitrot, for security reasons it might not be advisable to use it outside of closed local networks.
In case you'd like to switch login managers, lightdm is also installed on the system and can be activated instead of wmlive-gdm by using the following commands:
# dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
# systemctl enable lightm
As the very name of the xz compressed SD card image already suggests, the login can be done with user id 'rock' and password 'changeme'. You might want to change the password to something more to your liking. The root password is currently locked, so please use sudo to switch to root for any sysadmin related tasks.
You will require an SD card of at least 8GB capacity for this image. To put it on an SD card, first unpack it with unxz and then use dd to actually write it:
# dd if=pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img of=/dev/mmcblkx bs=1M status=progress
Or simply do a:
# xzcat pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img.xz > /dev/mmcblkx
Please replace the trailing 'x' of the device name with the proper digit representing the actual SD card device after verifying its name with lsblk.
It might be possible to write it the same way to the internal eMMC, but you'd surely need to restore u-boot afterwards.
I haven't tried this myself so please be aware that you are on your own should you try this.
And last no least, here is the download link: 1fichier.com/?spb5mf92cspc0clhdvlf
Here is the MD5 checksum of the image: affde27f458890bff1f258b531e5ea6b pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img.xz
EDIT: As chance had it, i found a few glitches in the above linked download and thus produced a refreshed image with a few changes:
* The secondary 5.10 kernel has been removed, leaving only the 5.14 kernel.
* Added btrfs related packages and fixed some minor menu issues of the Window Maker desktop.
* On the plus side, this xz compressed SD card image is now 50MB smaller than the first one.
New download link: 1fichier.com/?1xbzqoe5h0f48ux0bgmp
MD5 checksum of the new image: d2a1e88a559ae156551b54b903ef9302 pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid_rock_pw_changeme.img.xz
If you already downloaded the first SD card image, don't waste your precious bandwith to replace it with the new one.
Please don't expect a perfect system and be prepared to deal with the unexpected.
This is free software, so you are entitled to use and reuse it as such.
Hope it helps!
The system has been installed on a 512GB Sabrent Rock Nano NVME drive and in a second step also on the internal eMMC storage. The latter is mainly used to host the /boot partition components needed to start up the system on the NVME drive. With the exception of the /boot partition, both systems have the root partition, swap and everything else running on a LUKS encrypted LVM. This works well enough for me to use as a daily driver on the road.
In addtion to all the above described i also created a full minimal Debian/unstable system with almost the same features on an 8GB SD card. The installation is fairly basic but with lots of excellent CLI utilities that might be handy as a rescue system to fix broken installations. So if you are an experienced Linux user accustomed to mainly work on the command line, then this might be the right tool for you.
The folder /root/mrfixit_u-boot/ contains Mr.Fixit's u-boot update files which might be useful to restore a broken u-boot with sdcard boot capabilities on the eMMC. It has LVM and cryptsetup installed to be able to externally manage encrypted LVM volumes. The system is using 50% of the supplied RAM as zram based swap.
The default GUI is using Window Maker and is largely based on components formerly provided by the now dormant Window Maker Live project (by yours truly). Don't be surprised about the two terminal windows running a screen session when you login. Here is a first visual impression of what to expect: i.imgur.com/59s2a1e.png.
For people preferring a more traditional desktop there is the option to switch to XFCE4 instead, which provides it's components also in the Window Maker desktop.
The graphical login manager is wmlive-gdm, a fork of the old GTK2 based gdm version 2.20.11, which was the last release still providing usable XDMCP capabilities. The XDMCP capabilities are the main reason why i still favour it over lighdm. Since the gdm is probably subject to bitrot, for security reasons it might not be advisable to use it outside of closed local networks.
In case you'd like to switch login managers, lightdm is also installed on the system and can be activated instead of wmlive-gdm by using the following commands:
# dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
# systemctl enable lightm
As the very name of the xz compressed SD card image already suggests, the login can be done with user id 'rock' and password 'changeme'. You might want to change the password to something more to your liking. The root password is currently locked, so please use sudo to switch to root for any sysadmin related tasks.
You will require an SD card of at least 8GB capacity for this image. To put it on an SD card, first unpack it with unxz and then use dd to actually write it:
# dd if=pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img of=/dev/mmcblkx bs=1M status=progress
Or simply do a:
# xzcat pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img.xz > /dev/mmcblkx
Please replace the trailing 'x' of the device name with the proper digit representing the actual SD card device after verifying its name with lsblk.
It might be possible to write it the same way to the internal eMMC, but you'd surely need to restore u-boot afterwards.
I haven't tried this myself so please be aware that you are on your own should you try this.
And last no least, here is the download link: 1fichier.com/?spb5mf92cspc0clhdvlf
Here is the MD5 checksum of the image: affde27f458890bff1f258b531e5ea6b pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid:rock_pw:changeme.img.xz
EDIT: As chance had it, i found a few glitches in the above linked download and thus produced a refreshed image with a few changes:
* The secondary 5.10 kernel has been removed, leaving only the 5.14 kernel.
* Added btrfs related packages and fixed some minor menu issues of the Window Maker desktop.
* On the plus side, this xz compressed SD card image is now 50MB smaller than the first one.
New download link: 1fichier.com/?1xbzqoe5h0f48ux0bgmp
MD5 checksum of the new image: d2a1e88a559ae156551b54b903ef9302 pbp-debian-sid_arm64-sdcard_uid_rock_pw_changeme.img.xz
If you already downloaded the first SD card image, don't waste your precious bandwith to replace it with the new one.
Please don't expect a perfect system and be prepared to deal with the unexpected.
This is free software, so you are entitled to use and reuse it as such.
Hope it helps!
Devices: Pinebook Pro & Pinephone (Braveheart)
