Ian Goodacre Posted July 18, 2019 Share Posted July 18, 2019 I am very new to Armbian. I have been running it on a NanoPi R1 for 1 week and all is well, but I am now trying to understand how I will maintain it. I started with the Armbian Buster download, which I wrote to SD card then transferred to emmc. This was easy and completely problem free. I have installed various packages to set up some services and again - all was easy. I am running: BOARD=nanopi-r1 BOARD_NAME="NanoPi R1" BOARDFAMILY=sun8i BUILD_REPOSITORY_URL=https://github.com/armbian/build BUILD_REPOSITORY_COMMIT=76ac54aa VERSION=5.90 LINUXFAMILY=sunxi BRANCH=next ARCH=arm IMAGE_TYPE=stable BOARD_TYPE=conf INITRD_ARCH=arm KERNEL_IMAGE_TYPE=zImage IMAGE_UUID=f1b5feec-7431-46ef-a39f-2dceeabf23a2 I had a look at /etc/apt/sources.list and was surprised to see only Debian repositories - no Armbian repositories. deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free #deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free #deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free #deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free #deb-src http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free My concern is: how should I maintain the system (install updates) without loosing the Armbian customizations? The main Armbian web page says: Upgrades are done via standard apt-get upgrade method. But if I do this and only have Debian repositories, do I not risk losing the Armbian enhancements? Shouldn't there be some Armbian repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list? I guess that there are some packages (e.g. linux kernel) that I should NOT update from the Debian repositories and that for these, there is some other update process to get updates from Armbian. But it isn't clear to me, what I should do. I know I can build the Armbian system myself (not something I have tried yet), but I don't want a fresh install - I just want to maintain the system I have, for security patches and, occasionally, bug fixes and enhancements. I haven't read all the Armbian documentation yet, so apologies if this is covered and I have missed it. I have seen the "How to Update" section of "Getting Started". If anyone can point me to documentation that addresses my questions, it would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chwe Posted July 19, 2019 Share Posted July 19, 2019 1 hour ago, Ian Goodacre said: I started with the Armbian Buster download, which I wrote to SD card then transferred to emmc. if you pick an image from the downloadpage you should be fine.. if you picked an image from some shady places well.. 1 hour ago, Ian Goodacre said: I guess that there are some packages (e.g. linux kernel) that I should NOT update from the Debian repositories due to different naming for the kernel package, armbian will always pick the right one and not the one from the debian repo. Tweaks from armbian are mostly named different than debian packets (or it's a newer version and apt should get it right iirc). https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/fc1715450015ae62374a13d77f19b0ab53bb1d4c/lib/debootstrap.sh#L184-L190 iirc there it happens.. not sure where or if we described it in the docs.. people normally don't care as long as it happens.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Goodacre Posted July 19, 2019 Author Share Posted July 19, 2019 Thanks chew, that makes sense, except that it looks like I should have the Armbian repo in my sources.list, but its not there at the moment. Should I add it? I see the code you linked, but I'm not clear when that runs to add the repo. I must admit, I'm being a bit fussy and pedantic - so far, everything has 'just worked' ;-) I have now had a pretty thorough look through the docs and I don't think its there - unless somewhere very obscure. Certainly not in the section on updating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Goodacre Posted July 19, 2019 Author Share Posted July 19, 2019 Actually, it is there, just not in the main sources.list - it's in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list, so all is well, except that I don't really know what I'm doing. Thanks for the help and for the great distribution - I'm really liking it, and the NanoPi R1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chwe Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 On 7/20/2019 at 12:11 AM, Ian Goodacre said: except that I don't really know what I'm doing. nothing wrong with that. At least you're willing to explore things on your own and learn it which is IMO a way better than thinking you know everything whereas in reality you don't even know the basics. https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/sources.list.5.en.html this might be a good starter to learn more in case you're interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Goodacre Posted July 23, 2019 Author Share Posted July 23, 2019 8 hours ago, chwe said: this might be a good starter to learn more in case you're interested. I read that, and spent a few days reading and experimenting with SysV Init scripts and systemd service files. It was a busy week - all very interesting. The system is nicely settled now. Thanks for the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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