Official Debian support!

[amp]

Please note that, unfortunately, there is a regression now in the installer that I often observed with Debian unstable in the past: Debian now ships kernel 5.6 but the installer probably still includes 5.5. The installer boots up fine etc. but later in the step with selecting the mirror - no matter what mirror you select - the installer refuses to continue because it can't find a kernel/modules that match the installer's kernel.

I tried using older partition.img.gz files but I didn't fine one that works. If anyone knows a workaround please share.

This is typically fixed in a few days, when the installer images are rebuilt with the newer kernel.

[pfeerick]

For anyone else wondering why the link doesn't work... it's because the daily netboot images are broken atm, so the linked folder doesn't even exist.

As of right now (1st of May, 2020), the below daily build, rather than the latest one, is the one to use (build wise, anyway).

https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm6...rd-images/

And how to use the images?

1) Download the firmware file that suits your board - pine64-plus, pinebook, rock64, rockpro64 or pinebookpro.
2) Download the installer partition
3) Mash the two together
4) Write them to a microSD
5) Give it a try!

For the pinebook pro, that could look something like (although I actually used the 20200430-02:15 build, not the daily, again, since it's missing atm - betcha it'll be back again tomorrow!):

Code:

wget https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/partition.img.gz
wget https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz
zcat firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz partition.img.gz > pinebookpro-debian-installer.img
dd if=pinebookpro-debian-installer.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M status=progress

Note: ALWAYS double check your of= path before using dd, otherwise you might overwrite something you didn't mean to!

[kuleszdl]

Has anyone this running? I installed Devuan unstable (Which is basically the same) but I am not getting any image on the display. But serial console works fine so far, yet it's not really usable.

Is there any patch or other stuff needed to get the display running? The installer also does not display an image on-screen.

[Der Geist der Maschine]

Has anyone this running? I installed Devuan unstable (Which is basically the same) but I am not getting any image on the display. But serial console works fine so far, yet it's not really usable.

Is there any patch or other stuff needed to get the display running? The installer also does not display an image on-screen.

Compare your running setup against Daniel's installer https://github.com/daniel-thompson/pineb...all-debian

Try #1: check that you have the same firmware on your system.

A long time ago, it was mentioned here on this board what it takes to initialize the display. The details escape me. Good luck hunting for them.

[kuleszdl]

That's not straight-forward as he is using a different kernel and a different u-boot which both contain patches. He also uses some firmware from manjaro, one of them provides firmware for the displayport controller:

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/tsys/pinebook-firmware

Is the internal display also connected via displayport and, thus, requires this firmware? I will try to figure this out, as well as search for the mentioned thread regarding bringup of the display.

Btw. it looks like indeed that there is a package that provides u-boot for these platforms (last time I tried the installer did not propose to install it though): https://packages.debian.org/sid/u-boot-rockchip

[foresto]

This thread is really encouraging news. Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

What boot devices are supported after installing Debian with these installers?

Will the system require an SD card or eMMC to boot, or can the board boot directly from SATA instead?

Can the OS be installed to a SATA disk?

[tllim]

This thread is really encouraging news. Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

What boot devices are supported after installing Debian with these installers?

Will the system require an SD card or eMMC to boot, or can the board boot directly from SATA instead?

Can the OS be installed to a SATA disk?

OS not able boot directly from SATA.

[dukla2000]

Please note that, unfortunately, there is a regression now in the installer that I often observed with Debian unstable in the past: Debian now ships kernel 5.6 but the installer probably still includes 5.5. The installer boots up fine etc. but later in the step with selecting the mirror - no matter what mirror you select - the installer refuses to continue because it can't find a kernel/modules that match the installer's kernel.

I tried using older partition.img.gz files but I didn't fine one that works. If anyone knows a workaround please share.

OK, having read through this thread and the one in the PBP section, has anyone got this to work yet?

I tried for my ROCKPro64 last night.

• Could download firmware.rockpro64 fine
  
• Could download partition.img fine
  
• Could zcat mash them together fine
  
• Could dd to an SD-card
  
• Could boot the resulting SD-card fine
  
• Could select various installer options (such as country, keyboard) fine
  
• After selecting a mirror a whole lot of downloading action happened (as witnessed by activity on my router)
  
• Then after 30 mins of flashing cursor in bottom left of screen I gave up.
  

I was anticipating a "no bootloader" problem on the resulting SD-card but never got that far!

[xmixahlx]

this is all hype right now unless you are a developer merging tsys kernel and mrfixit uboot patches upstream.

[pinepersoon]

Installed this on my new ROCKPro64 today. runs very well!
for anyone wondering (as i did) how to boot this after installation:

1. copy a DTB to the boot partition (partition 2), you can find the ones from the debian package on the installer's boot partition which is still intact after installation (partition 1)
For the ROCKPro64 this would be rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb.

something like:

Code:

$ sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/oldboot
$ sudo mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt/boot
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/dtbs
$ sudo cp /mnt/oldboot/dtbs/rockchip/rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb /mnt/boot/dtbs/

2. create a /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf:

Code:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/boot/extlinux
$ sudoedit /mnt/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

extlinux.conf:

Code:

default l0
menu title Debian
prompt 0
timeout 50

label l0
menu label Debian
linux /vmlinuz
append root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rw
initrd /initrd.img
fdt /dtbs/rk3399-rockpro64-v2.dtb

3. boot!