An unofficial Debian Installer for Pinebook Pro

[wasgurd]

Thanks @schanzen !

This might not be the problem causing trouble for @wasgurd but it is definitely something missing in the installer. Looks like I applied this by hand to my own install and forgot to go back and update the installer to match.

I'll see if I can take a look at this over the weekend (although github PRs for things like this are very welcome if anyone wants to beat me to it).

Might be make a .deb with the firmware and put it in your repository?

[danielt]

Might be make a .deb with the firmware and put it in your repository?

Actually I think I might be remembering why I didn't add this in the first place. It is already packaged for Debian (linux-firmware-nonfree) but it is separated off into the non-free repos that are not usually included in sources.list by default.

[e-minguez]

Maybe this is something to explore https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8752
If it works, the numcpu hack can be removed...

I would try it by myself but I don't have a serial cable to debug it just in case something happens. Any brave soul out there?

[wasgurd]

Might be make a .deb with the firmware and put it in your repository?

Actually I think I might be remembering why I didn't add this in the first place. It is already packaged for Debian (linux-firmware-nonfree) but it is separated off into the non-free repos that are not usually included in sources.list by default.

Code:

apt-cache policy firmware-misc-nonfree
firmware-misc-nonfree:
 Installed: 20190717-2
 Candidate: 20190717-2

dmesg | grep firm
[    0.000000] psci: PSCIv1.0 detected in firmware.
[    4.983887] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2
[    5.632321] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
[    6.071556] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2
[    8.151167] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2
[   12.231147] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2
[   20.321081] cdn-dp fec00000.dp: Direct firmware load for rockchip/dptx.bin failed with error -2
[   24.374010] ARM_SMCCC_ARCH_WORKAROUND_1 missing from firmware
[   24.703639] bluetooth hci1: Direct firmware load for brcm/BCM4345C5.hcd failed with error -2

[e-minguez]

Something has happened with firefox-esr in Debian bullseye, it fails to start with an 'illegal instruction' message

Edit: I've just seen this https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepor...bug=948708

[wasgurd]

Something has happened with firefox-esr in Debian bullseye, it fails to start with an 'illegal instruction' message

Enviado desde mi ONEPLUS A5010 mediante Tapatalk

I've gotten the same, to resolve I've installed the firefox-esr from the buster-backports. It works fine for me.

[ThatGeoGuy]

Hey there! I just got my ANSI Pinebook Pro.

I'm interested in this Debian image because it seems pretty similar to the stock image, but has LUKS / crypt support.

What's the best way to install this on the eMMC module, with full crypt support? Is it possible to get an eMMC adapter, and install this via another linux machine (even if that machine is x86_64?).

[danielt]

Hey there! I just got my ANSI Pinebook Pro.

I'm interested in this Debian image because it seems pretty similar to the stock image, but has LUKS / crypt support.

What's the best way to install this on the eMMC module, with full crypt support? Is it possible to get an eMMC adapter, and install this via another linux machine (even if that machine is x86_64?).

I'd recommend to start by installing unencrypted it to a fast SD card.

As an aside modern A1 or A2 cards designed for Android now mean you can get some clues about controller quality and how fast your card will be running a complex filesystem. My A1 cards are much better than the U1 cards of the same brand I bought two years ago although others have reported less obvious differences so it might be depend how old or how awesome your U1 cards are.

Installing to SD card has a couple of benefits.

The first if you can tell if you like it before you nuke the stock distro. Personally I'm not sure I agree it is similar to the stock image... I expect both to have different rough edges so IMHO it comes down to personal preference so testing first is good even if it is slightly slower than when installed to eMMC.

Secondly you don't have to take the machine apart. Sure its easy to take apart but there will be wear and tear each time you do it.

Finally you can use the SD card installation to install an encrypted version back to the eMMC. This step is probably necessary anyway since the stock kernel doesn't have the crypto support needed to do an encrypted install.

[ThatGeoGuy]

Hey there! I just got my ANSI Pinebook Pro.

I'm interested in this Debian image because it seems pretty similar to the stock image, but has LUKS / crypt support.

What's the best way to install this on the eMMC module, with full crypt support? Is it possible to get an eMMC adapter, and install this via another linux machine (even if that machine is x86_64?).

I'd recommend to start by installing unencrypted it to a fast SD card.

As an aside modern A1 or A2 cards designed for Android now mean you can get some clues about controller quality and how fast your card will be running a complex filesystem. My A1 cards are much better than the U1 cards of the same brand I bought two years ago although others have reported less obvious differences so it might be depend how old or how awesome your U1 cards are.

Installing to SD card has a couple of benefits.

The first if you can tell if you like it before you nuke the stock distro. Personally I'm not sure I agree it is similar to the stock image... I expect both to have different rough edges so IMHO it comes down to personal preference so testing first is good even if it is slightly slower than when installed to eMMC.

Secondly you don't have to take the machine apart. Sure its easy to take apart but there will be wear and tear each time you do it.

Finally you can use the SD card installation to install an encrypted version back to the eMMC. This step is probably necessary anyway since the stock kernel doesn't have the crypto support needed to do an encrypted install.

Awesome, thanks! Do firmware and other updates get backported to this release (or do they just hope to get mainlined?)?

I'm trying to figure out what the rough edges would be, but not having encryption support on a laptop is a pretty big one for me.I assume by default most of the inputs work, and WiFi / Bluetooth is in good shape? If so, it doesn't seem too limited in comparison to default debian, so I'll take your word for it. My plan is to avoid most DEs anyways, and probably stick to awesomewm/sway/i3 anyways. So assuming the basics are working, I don't think my needs are too complex :)

My apologies here as I would have read the whole thread to see others' opinions, but I've barely even gotten to turning the laptop on yet. I'll give both the default distro and this a fair try, but I suspect I'll end up installing this one long term if encryption is working well. Thanks again for taking the time to reply!

[ab1jx]

This is fun, I like it because it uses debootstrap and you potentially end up with a cutting-edge system.  But I wonder if it's possible to toughen it so it drops breadcrumbs and checks for those as it goes along.  For those of us with unreliable networks where everything isn't likely to get done at once.  I got up to choosing software, lxde, web server, etc, then everything went dead.  Restarted and it went back and partitioned the SD again, got up to about the same place and died again.  My new SD boots to a very basic system with no network.   Since I think I can muddle through by doing dpkg -i downloaded debs on usb devices until I get network I'll probably continue.

But if it could recognize waypoints from a partial install like make does it would save time for those of us with imperfect networks.  Could these use make?

I decided to give it one more shot and it got through the downloads without stopping, now it's installing.  A newer than I've ever seen Debian on my first ever new laptop, always bought fixer-uppers before.  50% done,  unpacking.  Finished, works better than most of the messes I get into.  At least I'm not sinking time into trying to improve Stretch which accomplishes nothing.  Highly recommended.