Official Debian support

[moonwalkers]

Hello, I've been struggling to get Debian testing or unstable displaying something on the screen with a custom install.  Everything boots OK, but X won't start or any display manager (GDM etc).  I'm booting with u-boot+uefi though, maybe that's the issue?  I don't know how to do a custom /boot for non-UEFI though (I think there's a config.txt file I need?  grub?).  UEFI was easier to get going with.  Any chance you could send me the contents of your /boot directory or instructions on how you populated it?  maybe a fdisk dump too?

I do not use UEFI, opting for booting directly from u-boot instead. Here is my disk layout:

Code:

$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/mmcblk2: 58.24 GiB, 62537072640 bytes, 122142720 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: <derp>

Device         Start       End   Sectors  Size Type
/dev/mmcblk2p1    64     32767     32704   16M Linux reserved
/dev/mmcblk2p2 32768 122140671 122107904 58.2G Linux filesystem

There the first partition is just to protect the area on eMMC used by u-boot, the second partition is where I actually have the system installed. I installed already referenced above BSP u-boot manually, using good ol' `dd`. I also have `u-boot-menu` package installed, that automatically generates extlinux-style boot menu for u-boot. In my /boot I have just the vmlinuz images, kernel build config files, initramfs images, system map, and `extlinux` folder that has single automatically generated by u-boot-menu `extlinux.conf` file.

When you say "everything boots OK", does that mean you get your usual basic VT1 through VT6 where you can enter your username and password in text mode and get to your basic shell of choice (bash, zsh, fish, whatever)? If yes, then I'd start troubleshooting by trying `startx` command, which should be a part of `xinit` package.