Cross build an arm Debian Live system

[DrEagle]

Good morning All,

I am trying to made a Debian live distribution for the ARM Platform.
I have spend some days to try a Debian ARM live rootfs creation with
cdebootstrap, multistrap, and rootstock.

I'm currently made the build from a Debian Squeeze i686 and test and use
the result on a Genesi SmartBook.

I need to cross build custom packages and to cross build custom debian
live system.

Is there any plan of debian live to support ARM platform ?
Is there any tool that can help to achieve the same work as liveboot do
for i686 ?

I also want the live system to be armel or armhf based architecture.

Are the arm kernel image compiled and available in generic like i686 ?
Do I need to made a version for each hardware target ?

Thanks
--
A+ - Amicalement - Gk2 [:-]
---
Un arc-en-ciel ça n'existe pas ! Et pourtant tout le monde en a déjà
vu... (Albert Jacquart)

[Daniel Baumann]

Post by DrEagle
Good morning All,

Hi,

Post by DrEagle
Is there any plan of debian live to support ARM platform ?

yes; genesi gave me an efika mx to support that endavour. eventually,
i'll pre-build images and upload them to live.debian.net on a regular
basis (daily/weekly).

unfortunately, we're not quite there yet. the missing pieces are:

* we'll need armhf port (for efima mx, doesn't bother other arm
platforms though), that should mostly be ready on debian-ports.org
these days.

* live-build should, on arm, seperate rootfs and kernel somehow, so
that we can offer one (or two) userspace images, and a multitude of
different kernel and initrd images per hardware platform.

* currently, live-build always builds images natively. for arm, we
should use binfmt_misc, so that one can alternatively build it
basically everywhere (and specifically on i386 and amd64). zumbi
and i talked about that about a year ago on irc (check the logs at
live.d.n/archive/irc for more), it contains all necessary
information to make it happen (it wasn't implemented yet as there
was no way of confirming and testing the resulting images yet, now
that i've got and arm device since last summer, this should be much
easier in future).

Post by DrEagle
Is there any tool that can help to achieve the same work as liveboot do
for i686 ?

apparently, the ubuntu arm/linaro guys are using jasper on arm. i've not
used that, however, i would prefere having live-boot being improved for
arm on anything that might be needed for arm (again, not having done
anything with it on arm yet), but bugs and/or patches are most welcome.

Post by DrEagle
Are the arm kernel image compiled and available in generic like i686 ?

arm is a regular debian architecture, so yes; and armhf is available on
debian-ports.org.

Post by DrEagle
Do I need to made a version for each hardware target ?

see above about kernel and userspace rootfs separation. in the absent of
having that implemented, you would need one full image per target.

Regards,
Daniel

[Loïc Minier]

Post by Daniel Baumann
* we'll need armhf port (for efima mx, doesn't bother other arm
platforms though), that should mostly be ready on debian-ports.org
these days.

(technically you can use the armel port; it's just not as fast as it
could be)

Post by Daniel Baumann
* live-build should, on arm, seperate rootfs and kernel somehow, so
that we can offer one (or two) userspace images, and a multitude of
different kernel and initrd images per hardware platform.

In Linaro, we came to the same conclusion; we're generating on one side
rootfs tarballs with live-helper and on the other side we're generating
a special container called a "hwpack" which contains kernel,
bootloader when applicable, and optimized graphics drivers or such when
available. These are combined with linaro-image-tools into a bootable
SD card image. I'm not sure which wiki page covers this best, but this
might be a start:
https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/Ubuntu/ImageInstallation

Post by Daniel Baumann
* currently, live-build always builds images natively. for arm, we
should use binfmt_misc, so that one can alternatively build it
basically everywhere (and specifically on i386 and amd64). zumbi
and i talked about that about a year ago on irc (check the logs at
live.d.n/archive/irc for more), it contains all necessary
information to make it happen (it wasn't implemented yet as there
was no way of confirming and testing the resulting images yet, now
that i've got and arm device since last summer, this should be much
easier in future).

linaro-image-tools combines the hwpack and the rootfs on a x86 system
via binfmt_misc; linaro-media-create eventually copies qemu-arm-static
into the chroot and runs "dpkg -i" on the kernel and other packages.
We still build the rootfses natively though.

In the case of live-helper, it would typically be a matter of replacing
debootstrap with qemu-debootstrap --arch=foo; this wrapper around
debootstrap is provided in the qemu-user-static package and supports
armel and armhf.

Post by Daniel Baumann
apparently, the ubuntu arm/linaro guys are using jasper on arm. i've not
used that, however, i would prefere having live-boot being improved for
arm on anything that might be needed for arm (again, not having done
anything with it on arm yet), but bugs and/or patches are most welcome.

NB: Linaro doesn't use jasper, but AFAIK Ubuntu still does albeit there
might be plans to move away from it.

Post by Daniel Baumann
arm is a regular debian architecture, so yes; and armhf is available on
debian-ports.org.

NB: armel is the Debian name -- Debian also had an "arm" architecture
but that one is definitely not recommended for modern hardware (and
removed from modern Debian as well).

[Daniel Baumann]

Post by Loïc Minier
I'm not sure which wiki page covers this best, but this
https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/Ubuntu/ImageInstallation

thanks.

Post by Loïc Minier
In the case of live-helper, it would typically be a matter of replacing
debootstrap with qemu-debootstrap --arch=foo; this wrapper around
debootstrap is provided in the qemu-user-static package and supports
armel and armhf.

nice, so not much work then :)

Post by Loïc Minier
NB: Linaro doesn't use jasper, but AFAIK Ubuntu still does albeit there
might be plans to move away from it.

what does linaro use?

Post by Loïc Minier
NB: armel is the Debian name -- Debian also had an "arm" architecture
but that one is definitely not recommended for modern hardware (and
removed from modern Debian as well).

freudian typo, thanks for correcting.
--
Address: Daniel Baumann, Donnerbuehlweg 3, CH-3012 Bern
Email: ***@progress-technologies.net
Internet: http://people.progress-technologies.net/~daniel.baumann/

[Loïc Minier]

Post by Daniel Baumann

Post by Loïc Minier
NB: Linaro doesn't use jasper, but AFAIK Ubuntu still does albeit there
might be plans to move away from it.

what does linaro use?

Right now, we don't generate any "live" image in the sense of a
read-only rootfs + read-write overlay with an embedded installer;
instead we generate pre-built rootfs directly usable to boot a device.
Effectively, this is shipping an "installed" image with a pre-created
linaro user. Not something that Debian or Ubuntu would want in its
form though, but handy for Linaro users to quickly start using ARM
images without running any installer and with best performance.

[Hector Oron]

Hello,

Post by DrEagle
Is there any tool that can help to achieve the same work as liveboot do
for i686 ?

What do you mean by do the same as liveboot? which is your final goal
install a system
on device? be able to emulate it with qemu? boot it from RAM?

In anycase, I assume you already know about debootstrap and
multistrap. You could easily build an image pointing
to debian-ports.org archive.

Post by DrEagle
Are the arm kernel image compiled and available in generic like i686 ?

Konstantinos has put up some ready to install images:
http://freevec.org/repository/images/

You can start from there and upgrade your system with current stuff at
debian-ports.org,
which everything is a bit experimental, there is a kernel patched
image to support
efikamx, efikasb and some omap devices.

`flash-kernel` support is missing, but there is an efika branch on
flash-kernel git to be merged into
master, after searching for agreement. It is missing omap support. Loïc?

Best regards,

[Hector Oron]

Hi again,

Post by DrEagle
Is there any tool that can help to achieve the same work as liveboot do
for i686 ?

I forgot to tell you about debian-installer support, most bits and
pieces should be there, it might need some
extra fiddling and/or pull the right branch. I hope to have armhf d-i
properly working soonish.

Best regards,
--
 Héctor Orón  -.. . -... .. .- -.   -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.

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