An unofficial Debian Installer for Pinebook Pro

[wdt]

If you have a 64G emmc and a 64G uSD it can sometimes be damn hard to tell
which is which, even ,,, dmesg|grep mmcblk ,,is sometimes a bit confusing
So, I suggest, when booted to emmc and no uSD card in, either
dosfslabel or e2label, as suitable and something like boot-emmc or emmc-root
blkid will show labels,, lsblk does not

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Thank you for sharing this @danielt . I'm new to this but would like to try this out. What would be the basic steps to get this working? Say I want to run this from sdcard, I download the script while booted from stock Debian and run it from terminal, just make sure I select the right device to install to? I saw a few pages back that the installer switches the naming of the devices where sdcard is normally mmcblk0 and pb64 is mmcblk1 it is opposite so I need to pick mmcblk1?

Edit: Disregard, I found the instructions on github. If I have issues I'll try to work it out then post here.

Don't just download the script. There are a number of files - firmware, bootloader, /etc/ configs - that need to be present, relative to your working directory.

Code:

$ git clone https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pinebook-pro-debian-installer

This will pull everything you need, into a directory "pinebook-pro-debian-installer" and doesn't take but several seconds on a regular home connection.

cd into the directory and review the README.md for script variables, especially BLKDEV and CRYPT options. Execute as

Code:

$ sudo ./install-debian BLKDEV=<var>

Then? Enjoy.

[moonwalkers]

If you have a 64G emmc and a 64G uSD it can sometimes be damn hard to tell
which is which, even ,,,   dmesg|grep mmcblk    ,,is sometimes a bit confusing
So, I suggest, when booted to emmc and no uSD card in, either
dosfslabel or e2label, as suitable and something like boot-emmc or emmc-root
blkid will show labels,, lsblk does not

It's actually much simpler than it seems, just run `lsblk` and Bob's your uncle - if you booted from eMMC you'll see the device and its partitions mounted, whereas microSD will most likely by default have one partition, and if it is mounted its mountpoint will most likely be something like /media/<username>/<blah> instead of / or /boot or /home mountpoints used by eMMC you booted from.

[xmixahlx]

I don't look for mount points, I look for disks. to quickly differentiate between devices you can ls /dev/mmc* and mount/df. you want to write to something that is NOT on your root partition disk.

you need to use git, and you don't need to use sudo.

[amp]

If you have a 64G emmc and a 64G uSD it can sometimes be damn hard to tell
which is which, even ,,,   dmesg|grep mmcblk    ,,is sometimes a bit confusing
So, I suggest, when booted to emmc and no uSD card in, either
dosfslabel or e2label, as suitable and something like boot-emmc or emmc-root
blkid will show labels,, lsblk does not

lsblk -f does...

[FeMike]

Thank you for sharing this @danielt . I'm new to this but would like to try this out. What would be the basic steps to get this working? Say I want to run this from sdcard, I download the script while booted from stock Debian and run it from terminal, just make sure I select the right device to install to? I saw a few pages back that the installer switches the naming of the devices where sdcard is normally mmcblk0 and pb64 is mmcblk1 it is opposite so I need to pick mmcblk1?

Edit: Disregard, I found the instructions on github. If I have issues I'll try to work it out then post here.

Don't just download the script. There are a number of files - firmware, bootloader, /etc/ configs - that need to be present, relative to your working directory.

Code:

$ git clone https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pinebook-pro-debian-installer

This will pull everything you need, into a directory "pinebook-pro-debian-installer" and doesn't take but several seconds on a regular home connection.

cd into the directory and review the README.md for script variables, especially BLKDEV and CRYPT options. Execute as

Code:

$ sudo ./install-debian BLKDEV=<var>

Then? Enjoy.

Thank you. So I got the folder and cd'd into it but when I run
sudo ./install-debian CYRPT=n
I get an error, not a git repo. When I downloaded folder I used the clone button on the github website. I'm sure I'm missing something basic, anything stand out? I didn't use the BLKDEV= because in the read me it says it defaults to SD card.

Edit: so I deleted the folder and re downloaded, this time using git clone through terminal and now it's working. Though after all was done, to test I powered down and powered up with sdcard still in place and it booted to the Emmc. I tried one more power cycle to be sure and no go. Though it did write to sdcard as there are multiple partitions that weren't there before. The card's previous state was a working stock Debian from mrfixit so I know it used to work. Should I have prepped the card in any way or does the script handle that?

[moonwalkers]

If you have a 64G emmc and a 64G uSD it can sometimes be damn hard to tell
which is which, even ,,,   dmesg|grep mmcblk    ,,is sometimes a bit confusing
So, I suggest, when booted to emmc and no uSD card in, either
dosfslabel or e2label, as suitable and something like boot-emmc or emmc-root
blkid will show labels,, lsblk does not

lsblk -f does...

Indeed, even better than bare lsblk *thumbsup*

---

I don't look for mount points, I look for disks. to quickly differentiate between devices you can ls /dev/mmc* and mount/df.

That's three commands, whereas just one `lsblk` or `lsblk -f` can tell you everything you need to know to differentiate between disks and partitions in one command. And don't dismiss "I don't look for mount points" like that - you may have not ran into those situations, but when sometimes you have identically partitioned disks of the same exact model how they are mounted (if at all) is nearly the only way to differentiate them sans looking at their serial numbers.

---

Should I have prepped the card in any way or does the script handle that?

I didn't have to do any kind of special prep, I just inserted the microSD card, ran lsblk to identify the device file, and ran ./install-debian with explicit BLKDEV (from the Zen of Python - "explicit is better than implicit"). Try re-running? And make sure the script finishes successfully and doesn't output any errors.

[xmixahlx]

lsblk -f is a better method. habits are hard to break!

[FeMike]

I didn't have to do any kind of special prep, I just inserted the microSD card, ran lsblk to identify the device file, and ran ./install-debian with explicit BLKDEV (from the Zen of Python - "explicit is better than implicit"). Try re-running? And make sure the script finishes successfully and doesn't output any errors.

So I tried again and it looks to be completed without errors. I'll paste link to the output of script if you'd care to look. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3y65eonqph448c/result?dl=0

[moonwalkers]

I didn't have to do any kind of special prep, I just inserted the microSD card, ran lsblk to identify the device file, and ran ./install-debian with explicit BLKDEV (from the Zen of Python - "explicit is better than implicit"). Try re-running? And make sure the script finishes successfully and doesn't output any errors.

So I tried again and it looks to be completed without errors. I'll paste link to the output of script if you'd care to look. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3y65eonqph448c/result?dl=0

According to that log no installation ever happened beyond partitioning, boot firmware installation, and file system formatting. And the reason for that is most likely in this last snippet:

Code:

WARNING!
========
This will overwrite data on /dev/mmcblk0p6 irrevocably.

Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): y

It explicitly asks you to "type uppercase yes", as in 'YES'. Try typing exactly that instead of just 'y'.