Creating a Debian Image

From PlugWiki

Creating a Debian image for the Sheeva Plug

(rough draft / framework)

On an existing Debian system you will first need the utility debootstrap

 apt-get install debootstrap

Move on to setting up the image. The "armel" architecture will run on the plug. We will use debootstrap to create the base installation.

 mkdir debian-plug
 debootstrap --verbose --foreign --arch armel lenny debian-plug http://ftp.debian.org/debian

At this point you will need to copy the contents of the debian-plug directory onto a flashdrive (512MB or more). Boot the plug computer and via console or SSH login and mount the flash drive.

 mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
 mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
 chroot /mnt
 /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

If you are building on a non arm architecture (such as x86 or amd64) then you will most likely get the error message: chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': No such file or directory. To fix this, make sure qemu-arm-static is installed and copy /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static to /mnt/usr/bin.

You will need to create the following files on the image:

/etc/resolv.conf

 # replace here the name server of your ISP
 nameserver 4.2.2.2

/etc/hosts

 127.0.0.1 localhost

/etc/network/interfaces

 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
 
 auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp

/etc/hostname

 debian

/etc/apt/sources.list

 deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
 deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
 deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free

/etc/fstab should look similar to this:

 /dev/root  /       ext3    defaults,rw     0       1
 #lines below are optional uncomment to use
 #tmpfs   /var/run        tmpfs   size=1M,rw,nosuid,mode=0755     0 0
 #tmpfs   /var/lock       tmpfs   size=1M,rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777        0 0
 #tmpfs   /tmp            tmpfs   defaults,nosuid,nodev   0 0

Install udev:

 apt-get install udev

Edit your /etc/inittab file to include the line:

 T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100

Comment out the following lines in /etc/inittab by putting a # in front of them as they are useless for a headless system:

 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
 2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
 3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
 4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
 5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
 6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

/etc/default/locale

 LANG="C"

Set the root password:

 passwd root

At this point you can run "apt-get update" and "apt-get install" to add additional packages to your system. I would recommend the openssh-server as a start as well as udev and locales.

Ready to attempt to try out your filesystem?

 umount /mnt/proc
 umount /mnt
 reboot

Interrupt the U-boot sequence We can test the filesystem on the flash drive without modifying u-boot. The parameters below will only be effective for this boot and will reset on reboot.

Run the commands:

 set bootargs 'console=ttyS0,115200 mtdparts=nand_mtd:0x400000@0x100000(uImage),0x1fb00000@0x500000(rootfs) rw root=/dev/sda1 rw rootdelay=10'
 boot

Links

• More detailed instructions: http://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_265