iMX233-OLinuXino Debian rootfs generation

If you find this boring the good news is that we have already pre-build Debian rootfs and you can just download it from here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-bAEPML8fwlOHJkX2ZNanVfR2s
Then read how to make your boot SD-card as described here: https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/SOFTWARE/DEBIAN/README.TXT

Otherwise if you want to go through the learning path follow these instructions:


1. Prepare empty file system - it's good to be > 500MB, in this example we make it 1GB

  $ dd if=/dev/zero of=my.img bs=1024 count=1MB

2. Format the image with the desired root fs, in this example -ext3

  $ sudo mkfs.ext3 -F my.img

3. Mount the image

  $ mkdir rootfs
  $ sudo mount -o loop my.img rootfs/

4. Install Debian toor file system phase 1
 
  $ sudo debootstrap --verbose --arch armel --variant=minbase --foreign squeeze rootfs/http://ftp.debian.org/debian

5. Install the packages necessary for emulation of armel with x86. 
Note: If you make installation of 'Debian squeeze' you must install newer version of 'qemu-user-static' (otherwise you will see error qemu: Unsupported syscall: 341 when you generate the image in phase 2)

Only for 'Debian squeeze'

Add these lines in /etc/apt/preferences 

  Package: *
  Pin: release a=stable
  Pin-Priority: 900
  Package: *
  Pin: release o=Debian
  Pin-Priority: -10
 
add in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
  
  APT::Default-Release "stable";
 
add in /etc/apt/sources.list

  deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib

update the list of the packages

  $ sudo apt-get update


install qemu-user-static

  $ sudo apt-get install -t testing qemu-user-static

install binfmt-support

  $ sudo apt-get install binfmt-support


6. Start of phase 2 (this is executed on virtual armel machine). Do these commands:

  $ sudo modprobe binfmt_misc
  $ sudo cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static rootfs/usr/bin
  $ sudo mkdir rootfs/dev/pts
  $ sudo mount -t devpts devpts rootfs/dev/pts
  $ sudo mount -t proc proc rootfs/proc
  $ sudo chroot rootfs/

(this is executed on virtual armel machine)
  $ /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

7. To add the apt repositories, you must append these lines in /etc/apt/sources.list

  deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
  deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
  deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/  squeeze main contrib non-free
  deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/  squeeze main contrib non-free

8. Update the list of the packages 
  
  $ apt-get update
 
9. Config your language

  $ export LANG=C
  $ apt-get install apt-utils dialog locales

  $ dpkg-reconfigure locales
  $ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

10. Installation of some important packages

  $ apt-get install dhcp3-client udev netbase ifupdown iproute openssh-server iputils-ping wget net-tools ntpdate nano less


11. Config your network adapter usb11 and dhcp. Add in /etc/network/interfaces these lines

  # Wireless interfaces
  iface wlan0 inet dhcp
          wireless_mode managed
          wireless_essid any
          wpa-driver wext
          wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

  auto usb0
  iface usb0 inet dhcp


12. To config the file system add in /etc/fstab these lines:

  /dev/root      /dev/sda2       ext3    noatime,errors=remount-ro  0 1
  tmpfs          /tmp            tmpfs   defaults                   0 0

13. To config the console

  $ echo 'T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAM0 115200 linux' >> /etc/inittab
  $ sed -i 's/^\([1-6]:.* tty[1-6]\)/#\1/' /etc/inittab


13. To config the host name:

  $ hostname <name>

14. To add root password

  $ passwd

15. Exit from the armel virtual machine

  $ exit

16. TO install the modules of Linux Kernel

  $ sudo make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- INSTALL_MOD_PATH=<path_to>/rootfs modules_install


17. and unfortunately this is only the beginning :) 

in this image we still didn't manage to enable the  TV-console, so we will try to do it later

Stanimir Bonev, Olimex Ltd