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General questions and answers


Igor

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Since December 2013, when I started to deal with CLI Debian images and support them, things become ... bigger. My prime motivation was only to build an working Linux image for some amateur based services.
 

Project brought a lot of fun, a lot of new toys on my desk but also tears and frustrations. I hope and wish that public use our work to the greatest degree.

 

Blog comments - your questions and (not only my) answers - become large and valuable knowledge base for ARM single board computers and general Debian / Ubuntu problems. I already manage to pack some of the into the FAQ but I'll need your help and patience within summarizing this into General FAQ. You only need to login into Github to add to file.

 

I am slowly slowly closing comments on my personal website www.igorpecovnik.com and when most useful stuff will be in the FAQ they will be re-moved.

 

We are going further - projects are moving to www.armbian.com, forum.armbian.com and we are slowly getting an dedicated repository deb.armbian.com

 

Thank you!

 

:wub: 

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This is excellent Igor, I am starting a forum myself on my site. Can I ask if you are creating an H3 forum for the Orange Pi boards?

Also please set up tips for bitcoin for those who don't use PayPal.

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Thanks  :P 

I open an H3 thread in forum Development and add how far I got. Not much.

 

The idea is that H3 goes to the general Allwinner section when it looses development status. I only booted manufacturer Debian server and it's horrible, unusable.

 

Regarding Bitcoin - go to:

 

https://blockchain.info/wallet

 

and open a wallet by "Create My Free Wallet". Remember to printout the paper backup when done.

 

download.jpg

 

And you are ready for money flow  :D

 

Your account ID will be something like this:

17vT6hV83EQ6rizbWeasfy1tWEzFpzYqEE (this is mine)

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I created an account on github to edit the FAQ but it tells me that this was creating a fork as my own project ... and then something about pull requests? I'm confused - what's a pull request ? I just wanted to edit something in but not create anything new. 

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I know this way is a bit odd for such simple case but yes.

 

1. When you click edit the whole source is forked to your account automatically

2. Now it's your copy which you can edit

3. When you are satisfied you can send a modified code back to me (create pull request) and I decide to merge it, propose changes, reject, ...

 

This is Github way. It's meant for code and then those steps become logical. 

Mastering Github is useful  :P

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No, they don't.

 

Allwinner H3 is not yet supported within community kernel (+ variants) which is the only usable kernel 3.4 around. For some time there is support for Allwinner boards inside vanilla kernel (www.kernel.org) 4.x but not for H3 yet.

 

With the kernel from manufacturer you will be able to boot but in general its a waste of time. It's here only that they can state: "you can run Linux on our boards"

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Hi Igor,

 

highly appriciate your images :thumbup: excellent work, personally I was amazed by the dialog style nand install script :)!

 

I try to use cubietruck as a zoneminder home server, however I could not locate uvcvideo driver on your images.

Any idea to use a local webcam? /dev/video0 is missing :(

 

Thanks!

Kr,

Peter

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Thank!  ;) 

Well ... some webcams are available / enabled. If you tell me what / which to enable I can add to next build.

 

I usually don't add third party hardware support to the kernel source - I already cover too many things.

 

If you have sources for linux driver it might be possible to build. 

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Hello Igor!

 

Due to the recommendations in various forums and my own stupidity ( I nuked the default NAND bootloader with the "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nandb"- command )

I am not able to boot from my NAND with the standard and bad scripted Cubian tools. Therefore I wanted to try your image to set up a NAS on my Cubietruck.

But as I am stupid as always, I am not able to find any download links on http://www.igorpecovnik.com/2013/12/24/cubietruck-debian-wheezy-sd-card-image/!

Are you overworking the Website or is it my browser being buggy?

 

Kind regards

 

Daiki

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Hey. No, the problem was here at my web page. I am doing something and I didn't notice that one module was failed ;)

Thanks. Everything is back again.

 

For NAND restore you will need to do with Phoenix tools. No other way, sorry. (walk around)

 

BR, Igor

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Hej Igor!
 
Thank you so much for the quick reply! As I was able to test your distribution today, I really liked how you were able to markup the status of the services in colors. This is a genius idea and I really appreciate it. It gives the admin more usability and a better overall view.
 
But to be honest, there was one thing I really missed and I don't know if you ever want to implement it. The improvement I personally, as linux noob, would appreciate is a handy config-tool like the cubian-config or the raspi-config. This could be a thing that helps beginners like me getting started easier with linux and its configuration. On the other hand it's a tool for lazy people but offers the possibility to easily change hostname, ssh port, the default user password and a couple of other things.
 
Everything was working fine for me, except that I am not able to repair the first MB of my nand with the PhoenixSuit ( nevermind i am a noob anyway :D ), but when I wanted to apply another keyboard layout with the method described in your detailed FAQ - congrats for your work again!!! I AM AMAZED by your effort! ^_^ -, it didn't apply the selected keyboard map. This is kind of important to me as I am using a QWERTZ-keyboard. Is it me or do you know something about that?
 
What does BR mean? Google won't tell me?  :D
 
Kind regards, Daiki

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Google doesn't know  :D ? Best Regards.  :P

 

This configuration thing is something I avoid all the time. The one I saw on raspbian and clones is more or less just a feeling that you are in charge. In reality you can't alter many things. OK, you usually don't need to either. Having a menu where you coud:

- expand root (i do this automatic)

- change password (is it hard to type passwd)

- edit some conf file and save

 

There are plenty much much better configuration tools. For example:

- webmin

- ajenti

 

Why bother with developing something similar to raspbi config which is not really much useful.

 

And ... Thanks!

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Hi Igor,

 

 

Why bother with developing something similar to raspbi config which is not really much useful

I can tell you:

 

I'm not very familiar with linux - but I try to get it working by my own.

But I do not know how to resize a Partition manually - and I couldn't get to run all the instructions I found on a singleboard computer. without another linux pc.

 

And worse:

I'm trying to produce images for abolutely noobs with an homeautomation tool (www.iobroker.net), based on your images.

I managed it to leave it at 2GB. But I didn't manage it to resize the rootfs afterwards to 16GB.

 

With Raspbian's raspi-config it's no problem.

 

Can you give me a hint please

 

Thanks in advance

Rainer

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Strange. I am using auto-expand partition script which runs only once - more precisely at first boot. This scripts among other things alter partition table and puts "resize file system" script to the auto start. That script do the actual resizing in second boot since we need to reboot before we can do that. They have meaningful names: firstrun and resize2fs (located in /etc/init.d)

 

If you are using my script to build an image, than this should work out of the box. This feature has been with us for a long time and I don't have a record of malfunctioning.

 

Can you describe precisely how do you build an image - have you done any modifications to the script and which? If things are not working as expected is recommended to remove script /lib to force updates and to start over.

 

I am sure we can work this out. 

 

This auto-expand function was exposed by many people as one of the coolest feature ... even it is trivial for advanced users and even "not wanted" by very few.

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Hi Igor

thanks for your prompt answer.

 

I don't think it's strange - it's due to my little knowledge :(

 

 

 

If you are using my script to build an image,

no I don't ( I even do not have any idea how to do)

 

 

I really can't build an image like I guess you would do it.

I install your image - that works great out of the box!

Then I install all packages of ioBroker 

- take the card out of the (Banana/Cubie/Cubox)

- read the SD card with win32diskimager

- zip the file 

 

This is what I call "Image"

 

It is possible to work with it but limited to the file size of the image.

 

 

 

This auto-expand function was exposed by many people as one of the coolest feature 

That's really true, but how can I start this in my "Image"

 

Thanks again and sorry for the trouble

Rainer

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Aha, ok. There is a solution for this way too. When you are done with your custom installation just enable firstrun back and it will expand to new full size at next run. Execute this:

update-rc.d firstrun defaults

Than save the image.

 

Your minimal size is the size of your SD card, so it's not that perfect as original solution but if you are using 2G SD card which is almost full you are near to perfect scenario.

 

And you will also gain few extra things:

 

- force to change root password

- ssh keys rebuild

- package update

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Thanks again,

it works very fine!

 

The reaction of the first user testing it:

 

 

Du und Igor habt ganze Arbeit geleistet.
Hab das Image eingespielt, den BaPi gestartet und dann ging's los: 
- Automatische Erweiterung der Partition, 
- Ändern des Passworts...
...works like a charm.

Dann hab ich ne feste IP vergeben, bin auf den IOBroker-Admin und alles war da. Kein Udpate nötig..nix!
Perfekt!

The most important things:

"great work"

"works like a charm"

"perfect"

 

Thanks again.

 

And you're right concerning the image size.

But it's a method I can handle and it's almost near to 2GB and empty space will be "eliminated" by zipping.

 

Kind Regards

Rainer

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Ich bin auch sehr froh, dass wir einen Weg gefunden.  :P

 

The only and a small downsize of this method is writing to the card - you also write some unoccupied empty space ... but yes, it's not worth the troubles :)

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Hi Igor,

 

highly appriciate your images :thumbup: excellent work, personally I was amazed by the dialog style nand install script :)!

 

I try to use cubietruck as a zoneminder home server, however I could not locate uvcvideo driver on your images.

Any idea to use a local webcam? /dev/video0 is missing :(

 

Thanks!

Kr,

Peter

 

I'd also like to throw in a vote for uvcvideo. It's in the stock kernel source and supports a great number of cameras, and also was included in the 3.4.103 kernel. I tried, and failed, to build a 4.2.3+ kernel with that module in it-- selected it in menuconfig, built the kernel and modules, but no uvcvideo module appeared when I was done. If you could apply a workaround for my incompetence in the form of including it in a future release, that would be awesome.

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Dear Igor,

 

many thanks for bringing this great dedicated distribution to us!

 

I am the proud owner of an Olimex Lime 2. As others in this thread I see there is no support for this webcam in the vanilla kernel:

idVendor=0471, idProduct=0307

Philips PCVC675K (Vesta)

 

I think this has to do with kernel, because I could test the device with success on other machines.

 

If I can give you my two cents, you could consider adding broader support for webcams in the distribution, as I think it is one of the most common kind of device one could attach to a board.

 

Also a guide to help people building their own version of the vanilla kernel would be great (maybe there already is one I could not spot).

 

All the best and keep up the good work!

 

 

 

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Sorry for noob question, but how can we upgrade armbian os version?

For example from 5.04 to 5.05?

 

Many thanks in advance.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

But. There are some exceptions since we haven't populated repository with new versions yet. We are working on new major update and that one will have updates for all boards. Than you will upgrade from 5.04 directly to 5.1 ...

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