Re: Newbie Question on Debian Install

Just a couple of quick, possibly easy answers:

2012/5/29 Emil Tchekov <emil <at> tchekov.net>:
> after spending many hours in trying to install Debian on my Neo via
> script (failed every time on SD Card partitioning).
>
> /*I assume that my particular Neo has problems with his microSD
> interface - since I have tested many SD cards - also real high quality
> ones -> no success; but when SD Card was "filled" on Desktop than it
> works - so I was able to test almost all other Distributions via
> QI/U-Boot)*/

Did you read the section
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnFreeRunner#Which_distro_to_install_from.3F
? Ie. that installing from SHR does not work, although if you do the
partitioning yourself and then use the parameters to skip the
partitioning phase but do the rest it should work.

> But back to my question: - I have tried to use the tarball Debian
> offered trough the Wiki, but again no luck, it hangs in early boot stage
> with "unable to create debugfs".

I think that's a normal message, but did you wait for a minute or so
and it didn't disappear? If I recall correctly, booting the minimal
rootfs (2012 variant) should start X so at least the message should
disappear.

It could also be a combination of these, ie. some of your SD cards
might be better than others for Neo, but the fdisk problem caused
problems with install.sh and maybe then you didn't try the minimal
rootfs on all the cards. However, the SD cards are a tricky problem on
Neo and it's not about quality of the SD card as such, it's about just
what the Neo happens to like or not. Please check if any of your cards
are on the "Newer list" section of the page
http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=Supported_microSD_cards -
although apparently even the same product code could have different
variants. My working-with-Neo-SD-cards are those TS8GUSDHC6-P3 and
TS16GUSDHC6.

Anyway, it might be some other problem as well. I'm using the Qi
bootloader myself (for example
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtmoko/files/GTA02/).

-Timo