An unofficial Debian Installer for Pinebook Pro

[e-minguez]

Where is a good place to keep track of bugs related to the Bullseye image? Maybe on the installer github project? It's easy for issues to get lost on the forum, but filing directly with Debian or upstream makes it hard for Pinebook community members to see the status of thing.

Issues on github is fine but I'll probably close anything that isn't caused by a bug in the installer or the kernel. IMHO upstream bugs belong in upstream bug trackers.

I'm also of the view that bug trackers aren't the best way to see the overall status of things. They focus exclusively on what doesn't work, which can be pretty misleading.

Better IMHO to create a wiki page for the release and create tables of what is and isn't work plus perhaps some free form notes to transient upstream issues (such as the firefox problems). Not only is that more useful for users but it can also be curated by anyone in the community who interested in compiling and maintaining such information! If someone does put together such a page I'd be happy to link to it from the first post.

What about having the wiki enabled in the github repo?

[danielt]

The block device names are as follows:

mmcblk1 = internal eMMC device
mmcblk0 = microSDXC card

However, once booted into Debian bullseye/sid, those devices have different names

mmcblk2 = internal eMMC device
mmcblk1 = microSDXC card

Note how mmcblk1 can either be the internal eMMC or the MicroSD card.

Good point.

We could perhaps point the default at /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc instead (and add some code to follow the softlink). What name does the uSD card appear at under /dev/disk/by-path when running with the default Debian 9 kernel?

---

dptx.bin loading works OK for me meaning the (D)isplay (P)ort (TX) over USB-C works ok for me ;-)

I think this is because I have a slightly customized install where only /home is encrypted. As a result although the first two load attempts fail the firmware does loads on its third try after the rootfs is mounted. Anyone with an encrypted rootfs will have problems because the third try will take place during the rootfs decrypt prompt and will also fail.

Ultimately this is causes because the drm module is built into the kernel so the initramfs tools cannot find it: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepor...=857054#10

There is a hack further up in the above bug report showing how to add an initramfs hook to ensure the dptx.bin firmware gets included in the initramfs. If you have have problems with this firmware loading then please experiment with that and report back!

---

What about having the wiki enabled in the github repo?

I will if that's where people are happiest editing it but personally I was thinking of a page on the pine64 wiki.

As discussed in the Roadmap I rather hope that upstream Debian (and the PBP bootloaders) will improve to the point my installer becomes obsolete. At that point a wiki page on pine64 wiki would, as I remove obsolete hacks from the installer, end up describing the upstream status.

[e-minguez]

Wiki page started here -> https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo..._Installer

Linked in the software release one (https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo..._Installer)

HTH!

[NigelT]

We could perhaps point the default at /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc instead (and add some code to follow the softlink). What name does the uSD card appear at under /dev/disk/by-path when running with the default Debian 9 kernel?

---

Default OS / Kernel

Code:

$ uname -a
Linux Debian-Desktop 4.4.207 #2 SMP Sat Dec 21 22:42:47 EST 2019 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Empty microSD cart slot

Code:

$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc
ls: cannot access '/dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc': No such file or directory

After inserting an microSD card

Code:

$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jan 17 12:52 /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc -> ../../mmcblk0

$ readlink -f /dev/disk/by-path/platform-fe320000.dwmmc
/dev/mmcblk0

[delcaran]

Running the script to install on my sdcard

Code:

./home/rock/pinebook-pro-debian-installer/install-debian BLKDEV=/dev/mmcblk0

 I run in the following error while building initramfs:

Code:

find: '/lib/modules/5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64/kernel/arch/*/crypto: No such file or directory

repeated 8 times

followed by

Code:

depmod: ERROR: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:515 lookup_builtin_file() could not open builtin file '/var/tmp/mkinitramfs_RANDOMSTRING/lib/modules/5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64/modules.builtin.bin

repeated A LOT of times
The generated image shows splash screen followed by a black screen with randomly blink cursor in upper left screen. If I quickly switch terminals (CTRL+ALT+F1..12) sometimes I can see some kernel messages (with some ERROR strings) or a login prompt, both quickly replaced by the black screen with cursor.

The 'find' command is right: /lib/modules/5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64/kernel/arch contains only 'arm64/lib/xor-neon.ko'
When the second error is produced, the /var/tmp is already empty, so I cannot check.
The two tests above are performed in the chroot environment (/home/rock/pinebook-pro-debian-installer/sysimage is mounted as /).

The script repository is updated with last commit (1f1065a).

Am I doing something wrong or missing something?

[somken]

Which version of Debian does this install?

[rillian]

Wiki page started here -> https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pinebo..._Installer

Thanks! I'll add issues there are I find them.

[NigelT]

Regarding the failed firmware load of dptx.  (Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2)

Anyone with an encrypted rootfs will have problems because the third try will take place during the rootfs decrypt prompt and will also fail.

I think maybe everyone will have problems regardless of encryption.

My system doesn't have any disk encryption and the firmware is present in rootfs (/lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin)
But an initrd is present /boot/initrd.img-5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64 that doesn't contain dptx.bin

It seems the kernel only looks in the initrd (or rootfs appears too late), so regardless whether /lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin is present in the rootfs or whether rootfs is encrpted or not, it won't find/load dptx.bin unless it's in initrd.

In case anyone is interested, this is how I added dptx.bin to the initrd on my bullseye/sid installation.  (disclaimer, there is probably a better way to do this)

First check initrd for dptx

Code:

gzip -dc /boot/initrd.img-5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64  | cpio -t | grep dptx
74917 blocks

If dptx was not shown (like the example above) and you want to add it, then add a hook script to automatically copy it from roots to initrd when initrd is updated 

vi /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/add-dptx-firmware

Code:

#!/bin/bash
[[ "$1" == prereqs ]] && exit 0
. /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions
copy_file firmware /lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin

The script has to be executable or it is ignored.

chmod +x /etc/initramfs-tools/hooks/add-dptx-firmware

If you don't have /lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin present in rootfs, install package "firmware-misc-nonfree"

Update initrd and check it contains dptx

Code:

# update-initramfs -u
# gzip -dc  /boot/initrd.img-5.4.2-2-pinebookpro-arm64 | cpio -t | grep dptx
usr/lib/firmware/rockchip/dptx.bin
75115 blocks

Great it's present.  Now reboot.

For me this was necessary so I could use a USB-C to HDMI adapter to connect an external monitor.

[amp]

I've recently spent a little while hacking together a quick 'n dirty Debian installer for the Pinebook Pro.

https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...-installer

It is not a fully fledged installer... just some code that run on the Pinebook Pro itself using an existing Debian (or maybe Ubuntu) distro. It will install an operating system from scratch to an alternative media. Nevertheless it is a "real" installer in that sense that there is no downloadable image, no default password and you get to choose the keyboard layout, locale, timezone and desktop environment for yourself!

Hi @danielt,

Have you looked into / are you interested in getting the offician Debian Installer running on the PBP?

This might be a good start:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2020...00009.html

Have fun

[xmixahlx]

I've done some Octane2 benchmarks using the arm64 install for reference:

Note: firefox and chromium installed from unstable using apt pinning, and benchmark score is best of 3.

firefox-esr, 68.4.1, armhf, 7906
firefox, 72.0.1, arm64, 5269
firefox, 72.0.1, armhf, 7937
chromium, 79.0.3945.79, arm64, 9991
chromium, 79.0.3945.79, armhf, 9550

Notes:
firefox and chromium installed from unstable using apt pinning, and benchmark score is best of 3.
chromium arm64 crashed once during benchmark