tmp Posted July 15, 2016 Posted July 15, 2016 Hello everyone, I've been trying to find a list of the differences between Armbian and a classic Debian Install. Could you please help me with that? I'm asking this question because I currently have Armbian running from an SD card on a Cubieboard 1, and would like to install Debian to an encrypted SATA drive instead. I think I will follow this installation guide with the netboot SD card image. Once I have a Debian for the armhf arch, is there something else I should do to make my system as compatible as possible with the Cubieboard? I know I can reduce the amount of reserved memory assigned to various video devices. I could maybe try to look into the Security System to improve the perfs of the full disk encryption. Any other idea? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks
wildcat_paris Posted July 15, 2016 Posted July 15, 2016 @tmp regarding Armbian and classic Debian it is not a definite answer (as I don't know the full answer yet) Armbian is dedicated to embedded SoC system so (when possible, when applicable) avoiding to waste resources, lowering power consumption, keeping the hardware safe for as long as possible (like no crazy overclocking) Then Armbian has a tool named "lib" that can help to customize system images in so many possible ways.
rodolfo Posted July 15, 2016 Posted July 15, 2016 @tmp Armbian probably is the "classic Debian" for your board. Once you figured out the differences between the "classic Debian" ( I assume you refer to an arm distribution ) and Armbian, you'd probably start reinventing Armbian. Save yourself the travail and find out how to run Armbian with an encrypted rootfs.
rodolfo Posted July 15, 2016 Posted July 15, 2016 @rodolfo le travail laborieux Ora et labora ( and some minor fun in-between ) ....
tkaiser Posted July 16, 2016 Posted July 16, 2016 I've been trying to find a list of the differences between Armbian and a classic Debian Install Impossible. Since Armbian is not another distro but an automated build system relying on 2 Debian and 2 Ubuntu distros. When dealing with SBCs the distro used is pretty irrelevant (you can take any of our images, throw the rootfs away, replace it with another rootfs and it will still somehow work if you know what you're doing), everything that might go wrong happens at kernel and u-boot layer (for example if you don't have fix X in u-boot you won't get Ethernet running, if you use kernel version Y you need another fix in both kernel and u-boot to get display output correctly and so on). And then it's about settings that matter (eg. thermal/throttling settings, performance relevant stuff or enabling all hardware features of a board, eg. HW accelerated video decoding or USB OTG port useable as host port and so on). In these three areas the differences can be spotted (not by looking at the distro since when you choose an Armbian image using Jessie it is Jessie. But u-boot, kernel and settings might let perform your device better -- at least you don't need to be an SBC expert and can rely on our team member's knowledge ) 1
chradev Posted July 16, 2016 Posted July 16, 2016 Hi tmp, As noted by the others Armbian is an easy way to build Debian based image for many SBC. On the one hand it makes possible to include the right U-Boot, Kernel, package set and system configuration for your use case. On the other hand it gives you freedom to customize your system to fit your requirements. And finally, you have never forget that supported SBC with Armbian are targeted to specific and embed-able devices in opposite to general purpose computers. Best regards Chris
tmp Posted July 22, 2016 Author Posted July 22, 2016 Hello everyone, Thanks a lot for all your replies, I wasn't expecting that much Since the mainline kernel and u-boot now both provide out of the box support for the Cubieboard, it was actually surprisingly easy to install Debian on my hard drive. For future reference, I'll write it here if you don't mind. This method described in the armhf Debian Installation manual is easy to follow. I used a pre-build SD-card image with the installer, a Debian ISO on a USB stick, and preseeding to get an SSH shell because I couldn't manage to send command on the serial port. I just adapted my locale settings, increased the timeout a bit, and removed everything after the Network console section in the example provided in the Preseeding section of the installation manual. To add the preseed.cfg file to the SD card, I found some nice method: # gunzip path/to/sd/card/initrd.gz # echo "preseed.cfg" | cpio -o -H newc -A -F path/to/sd/card/initrd # gzip path/to/sd/card/initrd Then I simply needed to ssh into installer@192.168.1.xxx with the password r00tme, and I had access to the debian-installer. I was really surprised by how easy it was, compared to a few years ago. It helps to be able to see what's on the serial port to debug until you get an ssh access though. Now, as you said tkaiser, it's about settings that matter. I know I could use Armbian because it would do most of the things for me, but I really like to know what's on my server as much as possible. I think this thread lists most of the meaningful things I need to adapt, for the rest I'll look into the changelog list Please keep up the good work with Armbian, it's a really nice distro (or build system)! Thanks again for your help.
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