Re: debian-installer preparation for NanoPi M3 (arm64) please help

On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 2:57 PM, Rafal <fatwildcat@gmail.com> wrote:

On 07/29/2017 10:15 PM, Ben Hildred wrote:

On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Rafal <fatwildcat@gmail.com <mailto:fatwildcat@gmail.com>> wrote:

I'm trying to prepare Debian installer for NanoPi M3 board. This
is an arm64 device. I have a custom kernel package (which contains
drivers specific to the board) and I'm trying to build network
debian-installer (netboot) with a few additional local udeb's
whose will install the custom kernel on target system and make the
system bootable.But I can not cope with a few problems.

The first problem is that anna complains about missing kernel
modules. The complain is completely unnecessary but I don't know
how to avoid it. Is possible to disable the complain somehow?

Provide a kernel modules package.

The kernel modules package is provided and even pre-installed in the initrd image, but anna complains anyway. More precisely, it complains that debian repository does not contain udeb packages with modules for my kernel. It cannot contain, because I haven't access to your repository.

Ah, good. If you want to add it to the repository debian mentors can probably help. However for testing setup your own repository. It only need s the changed packages and the new kernel. Then a preseed file to point to both repos.

Second problem I have with bootstrap-base package, It installs
also kernel. It picks some kernel from Debian repository, but this
kernel will not work. Is possible to avoid kernel installation by
the bootstrap-base package?

Provide a kernel package

Actually Both problems can be solved by packaging the kernel which provides a kernel deb and a kernel modules udeb which at the very least makes usb both fully functional and not use unnecessary kernel memory. The only times you don't want modules at all is on tuned setups for very narrow applications or for boards with no hotplug capability at all which means no usb which means at the very least the mouse will be a challenge.

I have the kernel package but net-retriever attempts to pick some package from your repository only. It does not see my kernel package despite it is bundled in the initrd image. I have prepared my own kernel installer which installs the kernel on target system. Hence I want to disable kernel installation by the bootstrap-base package.

It may be interesting to add functionality to pull packages out of the initrd, but I doubt it would have wide usability since you can pull from multiple repos.

Rafal

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Ben Hildred
Automation Support Services

Ben Hildred

Automation Support Services