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Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

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Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#1 Post by ab1jx »

I have a few Raspberry Pis, unfortunately they stopped supporting multiple desktops/workspaces so a year or so ago I set one up with Debian and I've been using it like that. Only I forgot how I did it and I'd like to do more. I try to install https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... etinst.iso on an SD card but it won't boot (nothing at all happens). This is my 3rd try with slightly different images, once I burned one to a CD but it wouldn't boot either.

This is probably a lot easier in the Intel/AMD world but I did it at least once, what am I forgetting? In my latest attempt I downloaded the armhf netinst image, DDed it to a spare SD, plugged it into my Pi but nothing happens, the CPU busy light doesn't even come on when I plug it in. I tried a chmod +x on the file later, made no difference. The link I used was at https://www.debian.org/releases/bullsey ... installer/ and there's no sha file that goes with it.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#2 Post by sunrat »

Yo didn't say which Pi version, but from Pi 3 they can use arm64 afaik.
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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#3 Post by ab1jx »

These are Pi 3Bs so natively 32 bit (it's faster). I ran something like a Manjaro on one once that flipped it to 64 bit mode but I didn't really like it.

I just ran file on this file, it says:

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file debian-11.6.0-armhf-netinst.iso
debian-11.6.0-armhf-netinst.iso: ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data (DOS/MBR boot sector) 'Debian 11.6.0 armhf n' (bootable)
The stray n' at the end looks suspicious but it's probably OK. I see, it goes with the one before Debian.

I don't have an actual USB memory stick, I just have SD cards and a couple USB readers, which usually amounts to the same thing.

I think my problem is because I didn't install a bootloader like in 4.3.3.1 here https://d-i.debian.org/manual/en.amd64/ch04s03.html Nah, that seems to be just for AMD or maybe Intel, so I'm skipping it for now. This thing is all ARM. But there aren't any purely ARM instructions. I've used almost entirely ARM since 2009, Raspberry Pis or Pinebook Pro or Rock64.

The live install images https://www.debian.org/CD/live/ are only for Intel and AMD.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#4 Post by ab1jx »

OK, so I tried to use debootstrap which I've used before a few times.

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apt-get install debootstrap
mount /dev/sda /mnt
debootstrap --arch=armhf bullseye /mnt http://ftp.debian.org/debian/
It finishes the first stage but can't find some file for the second stage:

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debootstrap --second-stage
cat: /usr/share/debootstrap/suite: No such file or directory
I ran it again with --keep-debootstrap-dir, it still looks for suite, but now I see that's a file in /mnt/debootstrap so I copy it to /usr/share/debootstrap. Then it does the same thing looking for an arch file, so I copy that in. On the next stop it looks for a mirror file, I don't have one of those. So far it's been looking for things that might have been on the command line, what if I make a file mirror?

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#5 Post by ab1jx »

Then it comes up with

Code: Select all

E: No such script: /usr/share/debootstrap/suite-script
and even updatedb and locate can't find one of those. Is everything broken? Trying to use an old Raspian Buster just because I need to get this project running. I'd rather use Debian. If anyone knows a fix I can be reached at alan01346@gmail.com

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#6 Post by ab1jx »

I got back to the same place exactly after playing with Raspbian for a while then coming back to Debian. One thing I did notice was that all the stuff in /boot is intact on the host machine which is one I set up with debbootstrap a year or so ago, so I copied it over, let's see if it boots.

Nope, still dead. No yellow LED, no multicolor RPI splash screen, no 4 raspberries. Do I need to fudge the EFI somehow? At one point a couple years ago I had copied a RPI's SD to a USB hard drive and gotten it to boot. It crashed every time it didn't spin up fast enough but there's something you put in cmdline that stops that. I'm thinking it's still something in cmdline. I copied /boot over but there's still root=LABEL=RASPIROOT which will probably be wrong. That's a partition label I think, gparted can set that. I had to set the label on my hard drive partition to match what cmdline was looking for before that worked.

That didn't work either. I don't see an EFI partition exactly but there's a 400 MB FAT16 firmware one. That's mounted as /boot/firmware and my copied firmware is just in /boot/firmware. (just a directory)

I wonder if there's a website or email address for the author of debootstrap. Why do I get an error about a missing script, and googling doesn't find that error message except here? Oh, suite and suiite-script, those are maybe the name of the suite in a file. I went down that road once, I'm back here. And there's https://github.com/ParrotSec/debootstrap which was also a dead end. https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debootstrap.git is another address for debootstrap.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#7 Post by Aki »

Hello,

The Raspberrry Pi uses a custom boot loader and standard Debian ISO images does not. Therefore, standard Debian ISO images cannot boot on it without custom boot loader. A potential useful link is this [1] ("installing straight from an untouched ARM64 Debian netinst ISO") : I haven't tested personally, but it looks interesting.

As far I know, Rasberry Pi are not shipped with an UEFI boot loader by default (but work is in progress - by third parties ? - : https://github.com/pftf)

What computer are you using to build the filesystem image with deboostrap ? In any case, you need to boot it using the RPi's custom boot loader.

It does not answer to your question, but full Debian images for Raspberry Pi are available here [2]. The latter link will take you to here [3] and here [4]

Hope that helps.

---
[1] https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=282839
[2] https://raspi.debian.net/
[3] https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPiImages
[4] https://github.com/emojifreak/debian-rpi-image-script
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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#8 Post by ab1jx »

In a fairly recent topic on the Raspberry Pi bulletin board somebody said they "don't support" multiple desktops anymore. I have one or two old ones still running. So I'm leaning toward Debian to avoid being trapped in a dead end situation.

This machine I'm on is a Debian armhf I set up a year or so ago but I don't remember how, it's a Raspberry Pi 3B. That's what I'm working with debootstrap on. I tried one last night based on split boot images where you cat one file then another right after it and pipe it to blank space like an sd. That may be what I did before. This may be the right Debian page or not https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Build I overwrote my notes and lost them. And I can't spend much time on this for a couple hours. The split images are only for situations where there are many types of machines. They may have bootloader sections, there are many front parts and a common last part. Think Allwinner and other slightly different brands of ARM chips, but then I'm on the Debian ARM mailing list so I'm used to this stuff.

If you try to look at ~HOME/.config/openbox on current Raspberry Pi versions there's nothing there. Old versions or Debian are functional. But when they break they're hard to fix. This is armhf Debian Bullseye on a Pi3B with 7 desktops working fine.

The end of this touches on it where it talks about doing zcat. https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/ ... 01.html.en Not sure it's still in use.

I finally posted a question to the debian-arm@lists.debian.org list asking where to find this, which used to be common. If I get a working answer I'll post it here. A quick bit of googling found a treasure trove of old Raspbian images here: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/ back to 2012, possibly complete.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#9 Post by ab1jx »

These quick answers didn't work out. The Debians at https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/installmanual are 64 bit for Bullseye and the Raspbians at http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/images/ won't allow multiple desktops, at least as far back as 2019-06-20-raspbian-buster which is the first Buster listed.

I have a Pi downstairs I can ssh to with uname of "Linux pi3 5.10.103-v7+ #1529 SMP Tue Mar 8 12:21:37 GMT 2022 armv7l GNU/Linux" which has multiple desktops like I want. If I look at /etc/apt/sources.list it's running Buster. Maybe it was upgraded to Buster.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#10 Post by ab1jx »

I went back to a 2017 Jesse that was so old it tried to fetch deleted files and I still couldn't do multiple desktops.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#11 Post by Aki »

Hello,
ab1jx wrote: 2023-04-04 01:38 I went back to a 2017 Jesse that was so old it tried to fetch deleted files and I still couldn't do multiple desktops.
Does this [1] help you about configuration of the number of desktops ?

---
[1] https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... e-desktops
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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#12 Post by ab1jx »

No, because it didn't work. But it used to work at some point in the past, I don't remember when. I've cloned the machines where it worked I guess. It used to be that a Pi didn't come with obconf (Openbox configuration) installed, so you had to install it, then you could get multiple desktops. Then Raspbian started shipping with obconf installled and you could only get 1 desktop. That was just Raspbian, multiple desktops still work in Debian.

I was just trying Debootstrap for installs. I can specify armhf and at least the /bin/bash file comes up

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bash: ELF 32-bit LSB pie executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3, BuildID[sha1]=c47f98268abfe6d55a295d7ffab4e1faedb2ba58, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
But there are other issues.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#13 Post by ab1jx »

Trying debootstrap instead of netinst I did:

Code: Select all

mkdir newdir
debootstrap --arch=armhf --keep-debootstrap-dir bullseye ./newdir
And it ran for half an hour or so normally for the big download. Then I did

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debootstrap --second-stage
# stops with error
#E: No such script: /usr/share/debootstrap/suite-script
# suite-script (and several more) are in ./newdir/debootstrap

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cd newdir
root@upstairs:/usr/src/misc/debian/debootstrap2/newdir# ls
bin   debootstrap  etc	 lib	mnt  proc  run	 srv  tmp  var
boot  dev	   home  media	opt  root  sbin  sys  usr

chroot . /bin/bash
du -h shows 263 MB in the chroot

But when I do cp -ar * into an SD card and try to boot from it nothing happens. I've never had to mess with a debootstrap output before. I was a little surprised that what's in newdir makes a perfectly functional chroot.

The chroot apparently inherits the host's network connection so I did apt-get update and upgrade, now I'm installing some stuff. I need to figure out u-boot https://wiki.debian.org/U-boot soon. I'm still working with the chroot that's in my normal SD card, for u-boot it should probably go in a tiny partition on the target SD.

Apt-get install u-boot-rpi was easy. And apt-get install xinit. /boot is empty though.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#14 Post by ab1jx »

How do you trouble shoot a u-boot? It's probably not simple. It's an official-looking one, it's a deb from Debian. http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/ma ... _armhf.deb There's not much of a man page really, just:

Code: Select all

== Installation ==

The raspberry pi targets can be installed by copying u-boot.bin to the
FAT partition of the raspberry pi boot firmware:

  mkdir -p /boot/fat
  mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot/fat
  cp -vb /usr/lib/u-boot/TARGET/u-boot.bin /boot/fat/

Then specify the u-boot.bin as the kernel to load in config.txt on the
FAT partition:

  kernel u-boot.bin

It should then support booting off of MMC and USB devices with serial
console or HDMI with USB keyboard.
I followed the directions for installing as far as I know, but it does nothing. Is there some log file? I don't see how there could be since nothing seems to be running. I suppose it could write one before it dies.

I just watched a few test minutes of my first streamed baseball game, fed through a VPN in California. Usable I guess but very high CPU usage, that may be lower under Raspbian with more GPU work. I used ExpressVPN and watched in Firefox under armhf Bullseye. My grandfather would have been tickled pink.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#15 Post by ab1jx »

Hah hah, the multiple desktop thing was a joke on me. In the Buster retro package of Rasbian you can right-click on an object and turn up the number of desktops. I'll grab some screenshots, I don't see that situation here in Debian Working on baseball, Raspbian works better for streaming than Debian, because it's real OpenGL ES like in Omxplayer which is my reference. I can watch a movie with that and the CPU indicator doesn't budge much above zero because the GPU's doing all the work.

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Re: Trying to do netinst of an armhf on a Pi

#16 Post by ab1jx »

Well yes and no. You can turn the number up and down, but no user I've tried has file permissions to overwrite the file where that's stored, so it always drops back to 1 desktop. It's OK in Debian.

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