Debian-ARM for the NetWinder ============================ Bootable Image (with versioned glibc) - August 22, 1999 Jim Pick (with help from Adam C Powell IV) I've prepared a bootable image of the Debian base system that can be installed onto a partition on a NetWinder, so it can be booted directly into Debian. The packages use glibc 2.1, compiled to use versioned symbols. This image can also be used as a chroot environment - without affecting the software that HCC/Corel supplies. The binaries are now compiled without StrongARM optimizations - so they theoretically should work on any ARM-based machine that has an ELF Linux kernel available and uses the ARMv3 or better instruction set. With modifications, people have used it with Acorn RiscPCs, Chaltech CATS, Intel's EBSA evaluation boards, SA1100-based designs, Digital Shark and other places. The image is minimally configured - containing just enough installed packages to make it easy to download the official ARM packages from Debian and some additional non-official/local packages from my HTTP/FTP server. *** WARNING *** DO NOT use this image as your only means of booting your NetWinder. It is strongly suggested that you keep the HCC/Corel Red Hat image on a separate partition - or after installing the Debian successfully to one partition, install it to another partition. You want to preserve your options for booting. You could also set up a network boot environment via DHCP in case you get into trouble. See Stany's NetWinder Rescue HOWTO on netwinder.org. The Debian port is still a work-in-progress, watch for falling objects. In particular - realize that these are new packages that use a glibc 2.1 that was built with versioned symbols enabled. The binaries and libraries supplied with this image are completely binary incompatible with the older Debian ARM packages, and with the current HCC/Corel RPMs (which still use the unversioned glibc). It should be binary compatible with the future ARM distribution from Red Hat, and with the "Titan" RPM distribution. Known Bugs: * The framebuffer driver seems to have some redrawing problems with this particular kernel. Hitting ^l will redraw the screen for you. * (in the August 22 image) there is a broken package dependency such that apt doesn't work. * Some permissions are screwy, and /dev isn't set up properly. Be careful. Here's what you do (as root) in order to install it: 1) Download the image from: ftp://ftp.jimpick.com/pub/debian/arm/ The filename should be something like: debian-image_990822.tar.bz2 It's approximately a 9MB download. It is also available as a gzip'd tar archive. 2) Upgrade your flash to the latest NeTTROM. Get it at the projects page on netwinder.org: http://netwinder.org/~ralphs/howto/Firmware-HOWTO.html Read the instructions very carefully. If you mess up when burning your flash, it would be inconvenient. I recommend printing off this page before you try to redo your flash. Install the upgrade, and ensure that you can reboot normally. 2) Pick a partition where you want to install it. Hopefully, you have a free partition available. There isn't currently a good way to repartition your system - eventually, it should be possible to boot from flash and repartition from there - but you'll have to wait for that. 3) Go to the base of that partition, and untar the file, ie: # bzip2 -dc debian-image_990822.tar.bz2 | tar xvpf - (Don't forget the "p" option, to preserve permissions) This will untar the files directly into the current directory - so make sure you are in the directory where you want it! 4) You'll want to edit etc/fstab to make sure the base partition listed is the same as the one you actually installed it onto. 5) Reboot the system, and interrupt the booting sequence to get the NettROM prompts. If you installed the image to /dev/hda4, you would set the NettROM up like so (assuming you had defaults for all the other variables): setenv rootdev /dev/hda4 setenv kerndev /dev/hda4 setenv kernfile /Image save-all (or just "boot" if you want to try it out for one time only) 6) Hopefully it boots, and you will be inside Debian! 7) You'll want to do several things: a) reset the root password b) configure your hostname (in /etc/hostname) c) set your timezone "tzconfig" d) setup your networking (in /etc/init.d/network) 8) You will want to edit /etc/resolv.conf to point to your nameservers and to use your domain name. Or you can just leave it pointing at mine. 9) Install additional packages. You do this using the "dselect" program. Dselect has been configured to use the "apt" access method. It is configured to use an official Debian ftp mirror site that carries the ARM packages, but you may want to change that. Bug: /etc/apt/sources.list has an incorrect entry for the non-us mirror. This works for me: deb http://jimpick.com/pub/mirrors/debian-non-US potato non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free 10) You should have a functional Debian environment set up now! You might want to go on and add some users (using "adduser"), and do some additional configuration. You might want to join the debian-arm mailing list, by sending a message contain the word "subscribe" in the body to debian-arm-request@lists.debian.org . Also, feel free to check our website, which is at: http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/ If you have any questions, please direct them to the mailing list. If you have a correction/clarification for this set of instructions, please send me a note - . Cheers, - Jim