Debian Wheezy Instructions
Contents
Availability
An SD Card image for a Debian system for odroid-u2 is available in the downloads area Debian-wheezy
The files with the .md5sum extensions give you an easy way to check validity after downloading, using md5sum like this:
md5sum -c odroidu2_20130104-debian-wheezy-3.img.xz.md5sum # odroidu2_20130104-debian-wheezy-3.img.xz: OK
The non-filesystem area, including the bootloader(s) generally follow the HardKernel ubuntu images, like odroidu2_20130125-linaro-ubuntu-desktop-uSDeMMC.img.xz. The partition layout is the same, the bootloaders are the same.
The boot partition holds the kernel, initrd and u-boot boot scripts. These will not exactly track the HK releases.
debian-wheezy describes the system. The .img means it is a SD card image and .xz shows the file compression type. I recently dropped the added version number in favor of a date.
There are two versions, one is a minimal system and the other is a larger development version. The development version includes a native gcc compiler, and all locales.
Revision History
- debian-wheezy-2
- initial release
- debian-wheezy-3
- Added curl package, updated to kernel 3.0.57
- debian-wheezy-devel-4
- This is setup for native compiling. linux-3.0.57 is ready to build in /usr/src/linux.
- Added prerequsites for building the kernel
- Added sudo
- Built and installed the kernel per this tutorial: Kernel compiling
- odroidu2-20130205-debian-wheezy-devel
- This is setup for native compiling.
- A private kernel build is installed: linux-3.0.61
- The kernel source is removed from /usr/src/ in the interest of a smaller image
- Fixed locale setup. Added all locales.
- Set the timezone to GMT+8 (USA Pacific)
- Added ntpupdate package to update time from network
- The MAC ID is chosen randomly on first boot, but stored persistently in /etc/smsc95xx_mac_addr. For example the expected file contents would be like: A6:2A:DC:0B:56:74. You can edit the file to set the MAC ID if you need a specific one.
Issues
On first boot, the mac id file is not created, the root file system has not been mounted read/write at that time. Make up your own random mac id and do something like this:
echo A6:2A:DC:0B:56:74 > /etc/smsc95xx_mac_addr
You will see a message like: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/3.0.61/modules.dep: No such file or directory. This is not actually fatal, it is coming from the initrd -- which does not have a set of kernel modules matching the kernel, 3.0.61.
Features
Writing an SD-card image and booting will give you a completely pristine, up-to-date, headless Debian 7.0 system. Headless, meaning only the Linux console is active -- not the HDMI display.
The network will come up automatically, using DHCP.
The login is: user/password or root/root. Specifically, this means username: user and password: password will get you in. Or you can use username: root password: root. Yes, I do let root log in to the console...
If you log in as user, you can su to become root.
Root Filesystem Images
The tarball with the -rootfs.tgz suffix is just the content of the rootfs partition of the SD card.
If you have flashed the Ubuntu SD-Card image and want to try the Debian system, you can just mount the partition, delete all the files and then extract the tarball onto the SD card.
See this tutorial for step-by-step instructions: Updating from Root File System Images
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