Debian On SD

Debian On SD

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT FINISHED AND IS WORK IN PROGRESS.. ONCE THIS LINE HAS BEEN REMOVED, IT WILL BE "COMPLETE"

This is split into three main sections - Building from Scratch, Maintenance and Upgrades, Common Things To Do.

• Building From Scratch lets you customise everything from the outset, and lets you create your very own tailor-made distribution, rather than a pre-created one.

It does require a bit of Linux knowledge before diving in.. so if unsure, ask!

• Maintenance and Upgrades covers standard Debian maintenance if you're not usually a Debian user.

It'll also ( in the future ) cover how to upgrade your pre-built distribution with new drivers as the official OS gets updated.

• Common/Fun Things To Do will give you ideas on what to try in your new Debian installation.

Remember, this is a full desktop OS you now have squeezed into your hands, and feel free to share your cool ideas!

If you don't want to build from scratch, you have two choices;

• Grab a Minimal Install and continue from Desktop Environment
• Grab a full build.

The latest minimal is available here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-debian6.0-minimal.tar.gz
The latest full build is available here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.tar.bz2

Remember to untar with permissions ( include p in your arguments to tar ) on to your ext2 formatted SD card.

Building From Scratch

This isn't for the feint of heart.. if you don't understand something - stop! Ask or read up on it before continuing. While I haven't mangled my Pandora or PC in any way from doing this, it's still possible to make a mess, so be careful!

This is split into many parts.. it's advised to go through this in order.

• Getting a Minimal Install from Scratch
• Desktop Environment
• Device Drivers and PNDs
• Users and Permissions
• Reboot and Troubleshooting

Getting a Minimal Install from Scratch

There are two options here:

• Linux PC
• On Pandora

Linux PC

On a Linux PC, run debootstrap to grab the version you want. We shall be using Squeeze today:
sudo debootstrap --arch armel --foreign squeeze /tmp/pandora-debian ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian Grab a large SD card, and repartition it to have one large ext2 partition and format as normal.
Copy all the files from /tmp/pandora-debian over to your new SD card partition.
Put it in your Pandora.
sudo chroot /media/mmcblk0p1 -- assuming it's in your first slot.
/debootstrap/deboostrap --second-stage
... this takes a while...

Pandora

Alternatively, you can run cdebootstrap on the Pandora itself... this bypasses the need of doing the second-stage madness.
Grab it from here: http://packages.debian.org/sid/cdebootstrap-static and select the armel package.
Download it to /tmp preferably, but your home folder will do, or anywhere you like. For now, I shall assume you downloaded it to /tmp
cd /tmp -- Again, if you downloaded elsewhere, change to that directory instead.
ar xv cdebootstrap*.deb -- We're using the archive tool to extract with verbosity our cdebootstrap package.
sudo tar -zxvf data.tar.gz -C / -- Now we're using tar to extract, with gzip support, again with verbosity, the file data.tar.gz, changing the Current directory to / so that it extracts systemwide on our NAND. We're running this command sudo so we have write permissions.
Now we just run cdebootstrap-static with a few parameters, and wait.
cdebootstrap-static --allow-unauthenticated -f minimal squeeze /media/mmcblk1p1 -- What we're doing here, is we're allowing "unauthenticated" packages to be installed. As we don't, or probably don't, have the gnupg keychain stuff configured, all packaged will be "unauthenticated" regardless of whether they are or not. We're telling it we also want a minimal install of the squeeze release, and to install to where we have the mount point of Partition 1 of the SD card in Slot 1 - which you should have already partitioned and formatted as ext2!
This takes a while... perhaps longer than doing the first stage on the PC and second-stage on Pandora.

Desktop Environment

Now you have Debian, the world is yours for the taking! Or something like that...

Debian comes with a wide variety of desktop environments and window managers; from XFCE as you use on Angstrom by default, to KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, etc..
Now's the time to choose one of them to install.. be aware that the bigger they are, the longer they'll take to install and the more resources they will eat up while in use.. as a rough guide from heavy to light:

• KDE
• GNOME
• Enlightenment
• XFCE
• LXDE
• Fluxbox

Having recently tested KDE myself, it doesn't quite seem to work properly, so I'd avoid that for the moment... especially as it takes about ten hours to install!

We shall install LXDE as it's a bit more light weight than XFCE and still provides a reasonable mainstream environment. While I do prefer Fluxbox overall, it's a bit of a paradigm shift to use from your standard desktop machine.

If you haven't already, chroot into your environment. You should already be root, so we'll get on with the installing.

apt-get install lxde

Device Drivers and PNDs

We shall tackle these one at a time, as there's quite a few of them.

• X Display Driver
• SGX Drivers
• Keymap
• Nubs
• Touchscreen
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• Kernel
• PNDs

Users and Permissions

You may be wondering why Users haven't been done till the very end.. we've edited the /etc/skel setup which will be used to create your user details.

If you have already jumped the gun and created a user previously, all changes we've done to /etc/skel will need to be mirrored in your home folder!

Reboot and Troubleshooting

All that's really left now is to reboot and catch any issues that may crop up!

Maintenance and Upgrades

Maintenance on Debian is very easy.. it's just a case of running sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade from a console, or using Synaptic.

Common/Fun Things To Do

There's a wealth of power at your fingertips with Debian, so place your fun things to do here!