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#1 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-24 09:58:04

the kernel is very modular it will only load the drivers for your SBC, the netboot installer was working very well except it stopped at the error message with a no matching kernel (version 5.10.70-1 used by the current installer image might have been removed for chimaera repositories?). How to build a netboot image for an unsupported SBC in devuan  is described at the end of the README file, it might work if there is a specific device tree for your SBC, see e.g. https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dis … vice-tree/, so the problem reduces to build and configure u-boot which is far easier than making a custom kernel and to build a custom image for the whole distribution for every SBC

#2 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-23 23:44:50

c0rnelius wrote:

if you feel like putting in the effort you can build an OrangePi PC img for Devuan here: -> https://github.com/pyavitz/debian-image-builder

actually I didn't change anything it runs out of the box with kernel 5.10 (I've only compiled u-boot which is well documented) although I haven't tested it much only text mode, IMO it might be better to fix the installer, the fix might be to update the installation image, or maybe I didn't use the right parameters for the initrd image, ..., the installer can be used then with any of the supported SBCs in the kernel, instead of building an image for each SBC...

#3 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-23 21:13:08

it works making a rootfs with debootstrap:

Linux orangepi 5.10.0-13-armmp #1 SMP Debian 5.10.106-1 (2022-03-17) armv7l

The programs included with the Devuan GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Devuan GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
root@orangepi:~# uname -a
Linux orangepi 5.10.0-13-armmp #1 SMP Debian 5.10.106-1 (2022-03-17) armv7l GNU/Linux

the reason the installer does not work might be that installation image is not up-to-date as the error message says

#4 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-23 17:22:59

golinux wrote:

Maybe try images at https://arm-files.devuan.org/?

unfortunately those images won't work because the board is not officially supported but apparently kuleszdl made it work with a similar board (OrangePi Zero plus) https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=21185#p21185

#5 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-23 17:06:24

Unfortunately the chimaera installation did not conclude (No kernel modules found). I downloaded the images from:
https://pkgmaster.devuan.org/devuan/dis … rd-images/
concatenated firmware.none.img.gz and partition.img.gz, built an u-boot image for my board (Orangepi PC) following the instructions of https://linux-sunxi.org/U-Boot and flashed it to the sdcard:

# dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1024 seek=8

the u-boot image refused to load the initrd.gz image so I converted to uInitrd with

$ mkimage -A arm -O linux -T ramdisk -C gzip -n "netboot image" -a 0x0 -e 0x0 -d initrd.gz uInitrd

and then booted with the following commands to start the installer

setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200
fatload mmc 0:1 0x43000000 dtbs/sun8i-h3-orangepi-pc.dtb
fatload mmc 0:1 0x41000000 vmlinuz
fatload mmc 0:1 0x45000000 uInitrd
bootz 0x41000000 0x45000000 0x43000000

after booting the installer started but stopped at this step (No kernel modules found):

   lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqu [!!] Download installer components tqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk    
   x                                                                       x    
   x                        No kernel modules found                        x    
   x No kernel modules were found. This probably is due to a mismatch      x    
   x between the kernel used by this version of the installer and the      x    
   x kernel version available in the archive.                              x    
   x                                                                       x    
   x You should make sure that your installation image is up-to-date, or - x    
   x if that's the case - try a different mirror, preferably               x    
   x deb.devuan.org.                                                       x    
   x                                                                       x    
   x     <Go Back>                                          <Continue>     x    
   x                                                                       x    
   mqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqj    

I used the current image and changed the devuan mirror but it didn't work, the installer kernel version gives

Linux devuan 5.10.0-9-armmp #1 SMP Debian 5.10.70-1 (2021-09-30) armv7l GNU/Linux

could this be fixed somehow? thank you in advance

#7 Re: ARM Builds » Installer images for armel, armhf and ppc64 need testing » 2022-04-11 22:02:33

kuleszdl wrote:

Highly appreciated!

I tried it on arm64 using firmware-none.img together with partition.img and a self-built u-boot to install beowulf on an Xunlong OrangePi Zero plus. In the installation process I selected openrc as init. After fixing dtbs and extlinux (only required as the board has official kernel support but is not officially supported in Debian and lacks a packaged bootloader), installation worked like a charm - at least I didn't observe any regressions when compared to doing the same with Debian 10.

One of the few things I noticed was the following message on shutdown:

* ERROR: apparmor failed to stop

Not sure whether this is arm-specific, though.

I would like to install devuan on a orange pi PC which is not officially supported but it is by armbian. I have found a howto on the Internet: How to install Devuan or almost anything Debian based on Orange Pi PC/One/Lite/Whatever but I would prefer not to mix repositories (devuan and armbian), e.g. doing the same as kuleszdl did using only devuan repositories, since he has successfully installed on a orange pi zero plus, but it is not clear to me the steps of "fixing dtbs and extlinux", could you or someone else clarify those steps in more detail, thanks a lot!

#8 Re: Installation » Could not install under UEFI with chimera netinstall » 2021-10-11 11:39:05

Hi, I have the same problem but with the desktop version: devuan_chimaera_4.0.beta-20211004_amd64_desktop.iso in a hp notebook, the installer failed with grub-install dummy, I solved the grub installation problem deleting the dump-* files (thank you):

ralph.ronnquist wrote:

Yes, the netinstall is supposed to work in UEFI mode, and there are many cases were it has done so.

One of the issues that may come up with the grub installation step is that for some reason the "efivars" have got filled up with some kind of dump files. This can be handled by the following slight manual hands-on just before selecting init system:

  1. Shift to virtual terminal 2 by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F2, and push Enter.

  2. Check if this might be the problem by command: ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/dump-*
    If that results with lots of output, then continue with step 3;
    if there is no such file, then this is not your problem, so skip step 3.

  3. Remove the dump files with command: rm /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/dump-*

  4. Return back to installer at virtual terminal 1 by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, and continue.

but after the installation succeeded the system did not boot. I had secure boot disabled from previous beowulf installation and it showed the message

error: symbol `grub_verify_string' not found

so I had to reenable secure boot to make it work. Some minor issues not important are that the installation media still says beowulf and if you enter the help menu you need to restart the pc to proceed with the installation.

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