Re: Debian Bullseye on Raspberry Pi 4 4GB?
On 2021.02.18 23:02, Rick Thomas wrote:
Is it possible to install Debian Bullseye on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) from a CD/DVD or USB Flash stick or uSDcard?
Absolutely!
This can be done using the *vanilla* ARM64 bullseyes ISOs, in a manner
that, once you have prepared your USB media (which too is
straightforward -- see below), is identical to the one one would follow
to install Debian on a UEFI x86 PC, with Debian-installer taking care of
everything.
The small "secret" to this is that the Raspberry Pi 4 actually has an
official UEFI firmware [1] that is SBBR compliant [2]. Because once you
have an SBBR compliant UEFI firmware (and the ACPI kernel drivers for
your platform, which recent kernels have), any modern Linux distribution
that is UEFI aware can pretty much be installed on any ARM64 platform
through UEFI, and of course Debian is no exception to that.
SBBR is designed to make ARM64 platforms as easily to install an OS on
as any regular x86 UEFI based PC. And you can see that in effect with
the whole procedure to install vanilla Debian bullseye on a Pi 4, which
stands in:
1. Create a GPT ESP on a USB media that is large enough to accommodate
the content from the *vanilla* mini or netinst ISO
2. Extract all the ISO content there, along with an SBBR compliant UEFI
firmware and any additional support files your platform needs to boot.
3. Power up the platform and go through a standard Debian install using
the console or graphical Debian installer, which will happily set
everything for you, as expected (including networking, default
partitioning, GRUB installation in either console or graphical mode and
so on).
If so, where would I look for instructions for doing so?
This is documented on the Raspberry Pi forums at:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=282839
Please bear in mind however that, since Bullseye is a moving target (and
it also seems that validating SBBR installations on a platform like the
Raspberry Pi 4 is not yet part of the testing process for Debian),
regressions or breakage may be introduced from one ISO released to the
next. But outside of these (usually short lived) regressions, the
procedure does work, and you should be able to install vanilla bullseye
on your Pi 4 as easily as if you were installing on an x86 PC.
Regards,
/Pete
[1] https://github.com/pftf/RPi4
[2]
https://community.arm.com/iot/b/internet-of-things/posts/arm-server-standards-part-2-sbbr-specification-released
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