Prebuilt SD card images running debian

The A13 board can boot from the SD card. There are some ready made SD card images that are suitable. Some of these images can be found in this wiki section.

Once a suitable SD card is imaged with these files, place it into the board then power the board on, it should boot.

All images will have been generated for a specific SD card size. To use these images you must use a SD card that is the specified size or larger.

When the image is downloaded the SD card will only have partitions set up for the originally specified size for the image. If a larger SD card was used you can access the extra memory by using resize2fs.

Note: Some SD cards will list a size on them however the exact number of usable bytes can vary either through bad sectors or different manufacturers. The consequence of this is that an image from a particular size SD card may not fit on another of the same size. If this is the case an error will come up when imaging the card "No space left on device" or a windows error depending on the tool being used. If this issue comes up use a larger SD card size.

Download Method

These images can be downloaded using the methods below

Windows:

• Download Win32 Disk Imager
• Insert card
• Start program
• Select file
• Click "write"

Linux:

• transfer to card

For example an image with the file name of "debian_2g.img" would be downloaded to the SD card connected to a linux machine using one of the following commands:

# dd bs=4M oflag=sync if=debian_2g.img of=/dev/sdX
or
# cp debian_2g.img /dev/sdX

where X is the uSD card.

Images

Debian image

Official Olimex's A13 Debian image with XFCE4

Configuration

• 2g SD card image
• WIFI-RTL8188 support(change /etc/network/interfaces to enter your ssid/key)
• ASIX-AX8877 -USB<>LAN adapter in CLI only
• xfce4(start it with startxfce4)
• I2C support for UEXT modules - 100kHz
• GPIO(using /sys/devices/virtual/misc/sun4i-gpio/pin)
• installed GCC,mplayer....
• The default user/password are root/password

Extract it and write the image (A13_debian_WIFI_GCC_GPIO_IN_OUT_AUTO_load_X_I2C_100KHz_fourth_release.img) on SD card
Note: as this comes in a tar.bz2 file this is best imaged using linux

Debian with GUI (X)

Created by jwischka

Current images:

Video/headless A13 Debian Image, R18

Old images:

Video/headless A13 Debian Image, R17

Video/headless A13 Debian Image, R15

Video/headless A13 Debian Image, R12

A13 Debian Image with X R2

A13 Debian Image with X R3

A13 Debian Image with X R4

A13 Debian Image with X R5

A13 Debian Image with X R6

A13 Debian Image with X R7

Headless A13 Debian Image, R10

Video-enabled A13 Debian Image, R10

Video/headless A13 Debian Image, R11

Release Notes
R2

• 4g SD card image
• wpa-supplicant (change /etc/network/interfaces to enter your ssid/key)
• xfce4
• tightvncserver (starts on boot, no username, password: password)
• various dev tools (python, gcc, etc)
• sudo
• 500mb swap file
• custom (non-debug) kernel
• default user name and password: olinuxino and olinuxino

R3

• Updated kernel to 3.0.57.
• Changed FS to ext4, but left journaling intact. Journaling is fairly important when you may lose power at any point in time.
• Updated all packages to latest version.

R4

• Recompiled kernel with correct i2c timings
• New u-boot gives an additional 64MB RAM
• VGA should work (may not in future releases)

R5

• Recompiled kernel to support USB ethernet, via modules
• Incorporated additional kernel changes from linux-sunxi
• Updated all packages to latest version.

R6

• Recompiled kernel with (hopefully) added UVC support
• Added ntp, wicd, some other stuff

R7 - highly recommended upgrade for all users!

• Recompiled kernel / u-boot should now give ~480MB usable memory.

R8

• Total charlie foxtrot. Deprecated, and not available. Get R9 instead.

R9

• Rebuilt kernel after I accidentally deleted everything. Oops.
• Moved to 3.4 branch, which should offer greater long-term stability.
• USB wifi networking got dropped somewhere along the way. Should be fixed now.
• As with R8, things have been split into headless and video builds. Headless builds DO NOT HAVE VGA OR LCD OUTPUT. But they do have more free memory.

R10

• Disabled onboard wireless power save - should have much more stability.

R11

• Moved to Ubuntu base
• Smaller download, rebuilt card
• New option to switch between "headless" and "video" kernels (go-video and go-headless scripts)

R12

• Re-added LCD support (accidentally dropped somewhere)
• Compiled framebuffer support. Takes more memory - let me know if you'd prefer to have it out.
• Fixed a bug where u-boot would hang if there was no serial console attached. "Fixed", but not in a very good way. Set bootwait to zero, which bypassed the problem rather than fixing it.

R15

• Updated kernel to 3.4.29
• Cedar/Mali now baked in (not module) for video kernel

R17

• USB->Serial support

R18

• FTDI support
• Added wireless drivers to video kernel
• Preliminary support for cpufreqd

once logged in to start the user interface type "startx"

Forum thread link for this image

Linaro Image

Linaro ALIP image

Configuration

• 4gb SD card image
• Linaro alip ( lubuntu 12.04 widh lxde desktop environment, minimal )
• kernel 3.4.19
• to setup networking you can edit /etc/network/interfaces
• Password is linaro

Forum thread link for this image

Ubuntu Image

Minimal Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS with 3.4.29 kernel by anubis (Alex)

Features:

• USB-Ethernet drivers in kernel
• VGA, LCD support
• main console on VGA
• dmesg console on UART1
• DHCP on eth0 auto
• ssh server running (just 'arp -a' from your host to detect A13's IP and ssh it to connect)
• UVC camera support in kernel
• ready to install x-window-system
• .config is included (with uImage) to simplify kernel rebuild
• /tmp as 16M tmpfs
• Login/pass: root/password

Based on:

Kernel - https://github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi.git (branch 'sunxi-3.4')

Rootfs - http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/12.04/release/ubuntu-core-12.04.2-core-armhf.tar.gz

You can download it here