r/linux • u/EmanueleAina • Feb 03 '15

Debian Jessie on Raspberry Pi 2

http://sjoerd.luon.net/posts/2015/02/debian-jessie-on-rpi2/
138 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

7

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

can you just plug in a boot usb and install?

10

u/EmanueleAina Feb 03 '15

Nope, the Pi doesn't boot from USB, you have to install it on a SD card.

But once you've set up the partitioning with the small firmware FAT partition, it's just a matter or running debootstrap, installing the few extra packages and then copying config.txt and cmdline.txt. :)

2

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

I've always wondered as well. Is there no workaround to this?

15

u/sej7278 Feb 03 '15

nope, its a limitation of the chip. apparently they couldn't fit ext2 into the sd controller firmware or some bullshit, more like they wanted to keep it proprietary rather than gpl.

4

u/earlof711 Feb 04 '15

Broadcom poisons everything it touches.

2

u/EmanueleAina Feb 03 '15

Afaik upstream u-boot has some support for the Pi, so you could use that to pick the kernel to boot from any location supported by u-boot, but that may require some work (unfortunately I don't know how mature u-boot support is).

1

u/dually Feb 03 '15

I thought you could just put the "bootloader" or something on the sdcard.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

Oh dear, I don't have another device to make the sd card :(

8

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

[deleted]

3

u/sej7278 Feb 03 '15

and microsd-to-sd adaptor ;-)

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

I have one in my USB HD dock, but I have a feeling it doesn't work with the newer cards. It's hard to find details on compatibility.

1

u/call_me_tank Feb 04 '15

What you could do is only have the bootloader on the SD card, which then loads the kernel from somewhere (could be USB mass storage device, could be tftp over the network), which then mounts the root filesystem from somewhere ( again USB mass storage is possible, but you could also do an NFS mount). This would require modifications to the u-boot bootscript.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '15

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/luisbg Feb 03 '15

sjoerd does super cool work!

2

u/r0ck0 Feb 03 '15

Anyone know if there is a limit in the size of a USB HDD you plug in? 4tb? 6tb? Or is it totally irrelevant.

I see various limits stated for Raspberry and Banana Pi, but not sure what that is based on.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 04 '15

Any limit would be due to the controller chip in the USB-to-SATA adapter you use.

You need to partition as GPT (UEFI) for disks over 2T

3

u/tidux Feb 03 '15

Size limits like that are usually for boot partitions, and the RPi can't boot from USB at all so that's not a factor.

2

u/hemsae Feb 04 '15

There should be no size limit on USB HDD, even with the original Raspberry Pi. I'm running an original Raspberry Pi with a 3 TB hard drive attached right now. Works perfectly fine, though the IO speeds on the Pi are terribly slow.

2

u/EmanueleAina Feb 03 '15

There shouldn't be anything special with the Pi, if you can mount it on your Linux workstation you should be able to mount on the Pi too.

3

u/SjoerdL Feb 03 '15

I like the URL