Debian
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Intro
The plug's bootloader can load an OS from internal flash, MMC/SD card or attached USB disk (VFAT and EXT2), or network (TFTP + NFS). These pages will help you install an updated boot loader, kernel, and Debian system on the internal flash, USB disk and/or SD card.
Internal Flash vs. USB disk or SD card
Why internal flash? Well, it's already there and Debian fits into the available space just fine (with about 60% / 280 MB free), and leaves the SDIO and USB ports free for other things. SD and USB booting are great for development (switching kernels, operating systems, etc is as easy as swapping around SD cards), but less so for a stable server deployment (do you really want your root filesystem on a removeable disk hanging out the side/end of the plug, just waiting to be knocked out of place?). (And finally, as of late '09, the boot loader support for booting from SD and USB is not reliable for everyone...)
Choose Your Own Adventure
There are a few approaches to getting Debian onto the plug:
- use the official Debian installer to install to USB disk or SD card
- use the official Debian installer to install (indirectly) to internal flash
- create or find a trusted tarball of a Debian system and manually unpack it to USB disk or SD card
- create a Debian root filesystem tarball and use the Marvell SheevaPlug Installer to install to the internal flash
Option 1 runs with the kernel and root filesystem on SD card / USB disk. Option 2 picks up from where option 1 leaves off: using the Debian installer to create a Debian system on USB disk (or SD card), then copying that over to the internal flash, and installing a kernel image to flash. Option 3 assumes you can find a trusted source of a complete Debian Squeeze armel filesystem, which you then put on SD card / USB disk. As far as option 4 goes, it achieves much the same result as option 2 - though it's very little additional work to do-it-yourself, and you might learn something new along the way.
Note that Debian installer prior to squeeze did not support the plug, so options 1 and 2 are out for lenny.
Using the Debian installer to install Debian to USB disk or SD card
To install Debian testing (squeeze) to a USB disk or SD card, see: Installing Debian on the Marvell SheevaPlug.
Using the Debian installer to install Debian to internal flash
To install Debian testing (squeeze) with everything (kernel, rootfs) on internal flash, see Installing Debian to flash
Manually unpacking a tar ball of Debian
This option is really only useful if you want to install Debian stable (lenny, version 5.0), see: Manually unpacking a tar ball of Debian on SheevaPlug.
Using SheevaInstaller with a Debian tarball (Squeeze or Lenny)
SheevaPlug Installer can be used to install either stable (Lenny) or Testing (Squeeze) onto either the flash or SD card. The process involves replacing the rootfs.tar.gz from the SheevaInstaller which installs Ubuntu, with a replacement file that contains Debian.
Instructions for creating the rootfs tar ball are here: The Debian Alternative Method. Creating a Debian image describes the essential steps, the instructions are in a scripted form with additional features and sanity checking. You can either "roll-your-own" using the script, or there are prebuilt packages. Discussion and support of this method of installation is on this forum thread
