2GB emmc, what is recommended development image?

[Charles Kerr]

I have a non RevC (2GB emmc) BBB.  I tried the debian image, but noticed that it left very little space available.  So I am looking for a linux image that will be maintained (I ssh in, console based) to do some c++ and PRU development.

Is this Angstrom 2013.09.04 image for download (production image) the one to use?  Or is there another alternative?  I would like ro use Debian, but it used up like 94% or more.

[Robert Nelson]

On Jun 1, 2014 8:43 AM, "Charles Kerr" <charle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a non RevC (2GB emmc) BBB.  I tried the debian image, but noticed that it left very little space available.  So I am looking for a linux image that will be maintained (I ssh in, console based) to do some c++ and PRU development.
>
> Is this Angstrom 2013.09.04 image for download (production image) the one to use?  Or is there another alternative?  I would like ro use Debian, but it used up like 94% or more.

That's just the full out of box debian experience image.

You can easily remove packages, or use this alternate image. Which the official image was built in.

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Flasher

Regards,

>
>
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[Eric Fort]

There is a bare and/or netinstall image available, or at least the tools to build it in the RCN git repo on github that I've been looking at.  I really wish that when new images are released that the bare images would be built along side and released as a smaller alternative to the bloated full desktop images that fill the whole thing.   Hopefully Robert can reply as to the easiest way to obtain or build  the smaller images he already has pretty much laid out such that they may be used as an alternative base.

Eric

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Charles Kerr <charle...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a non RevC (2GB emmc) BBB.  I tried the debian image, but noticed that it left very little space available.  So I am looking for a linux image that will be maintained (I ssh in, console based) to do some c++ and PRU development.

Is this Angstrom 2013.09.04 image for download (production image) the one to use?  Or is there another alternative?  I would like ro use Debian, but it used up like 94% or more.

[Robert Nelson]

On Jun 1, 2014 9:48 AM, "Eric Fort" <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is a bare and/or netinstall image available, or at least the tools to build it in the RCN git repo on github that I've been looking at.  I really wish that when new images are released that the bare images would be built along side and released as a smaller alternative to the bloated full desktop images that fill the whole thing.   Hopefully Robert can reply as to the easiest way to obtain or build  the smaller images he already has pretty much laid out such that they may be used as an alternative base.

Hi Eric,

I update these about once a month. Does it meet your minimal? Just enough is installed to get network access enabled.

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Flasher

Regards,

[Charles Kerr]

I will take a look at it.  I stumbled before on getting the c++ and DTS setup for the PRU development on the board.  I guess I was missing what exactly I had to install to get that setup to do some of the examples.

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[William Hermans]

Search the groups here Charles, there is quite a bit of talk on the PRU lately. Also Charles S. has MachineKit I think it is called ? I've seen him tell people they can review his code to get and idea how it all works.

[William Hermans]

As for Development environment ? Make your own using Roberts "from scratch instructions ?

http://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/BeagleBone+Black

Using these instructions I've got a freshly built custom kernel, and a file system that is ~137MB in size. It will definitely grow, but it wont be anywhere near 1Gb let alone 2.

[Eric Fort]

http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz - 470MB

and
  https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz - 153MB

are indeed different.

could the naming convention used in each place be differentiated so one knows what they are getting?  I.E. BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-YYYY-MM-DD-size-type.img.xz with type being descriptive such as bare, netinst, console, GNOME, KDE, BLOAT, MORE-BLOAT, BIGGER-BLOAT, kitchen-sink, every-existing-debian-package-preinstalled, and somewhere in there "will-no-longer-fit"!  Might the smaller images be also made available / linked to on beagleboard.org?  The images offered on beagleboard.org may make a good 5 minute demo but they are so stuffed

 that after doing apt-get update and apt-get upgrade on a new image one is left with somewhere in the 10-20MB range.  try to install anything for real work like lm-sensors & i2c tools and you end up with no space left on device.  forget about even thinking about installing what you need to play mp3 or video files.  The smaller images really are needed, and adding a type field to the naming would be really helpful, as well as letting people know where images can be had of the type needed for their use.  Those working mostly over serial and ssh really don't get much benefit from the graphical desktop and all the software it requires, thus a smaller image is extremely useful.

Thanks,

Eric

[Robert Nelson]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Eric Fort <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz
> - 470MB
> and
>
> https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz
> - 153MB
> are indeed different.
>
> could the naming convention used in each place be differentiated so one
> knows what they are getting? I.E.
> BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-YYYY-MM-DD-size-type.img.xz with type being
> descriptive such as bare, netinst, console, GNOME, KDE, BLOAT, MORE-BLOAT,
> BIGGER-BLOAT, kitchen-sink, every-existing-debian-package-preinstalled, and
> somewhere in there "will-no-longer-fit"! Might the smaller images be also
> made available / linked to on beagleboard.org?

Sure, I can rename them "lxde" and "console". One of the issues for
me on getting them on beagleboard.org. TI/beagle people like to verify
it, so they take a day or two. The images on rcn-ee.net are merely
monthly snapshots, i do boot test them, but if we find an issue, it
usually has to wait till the next month. (although it's been pretty
regression free as of late)

> The images offered on
> beagleboard.org may make a good 5 minute demo but they are so stuffed
> that after doing apt-get update and apt-get upgrade on a new image one is
> left with somewhere in the 10-20MB range. try to install anything for real
> work like lm-sensors & i2c tools and you end up with no space left on

i2c tools should be installed by default. ;)

> device. forget about even thinking about installing what you need to play
> mp3 or video files. The smaller images really are needed, and adding a type
> field to the naming would be really helpful, as well as letting people know
> where images can be had of the type needed for their use. Those working
> mostly over serial and ssh really don't get much benefit from the graphical
> desktop and all the software it requires, thus a smaller image is extremely
> useful.

Another thing, we could start purging the "man" pages and other things
under /usr/share/ but those built-in stuff is one of the nice things
about debian.

and if you don't use chromium, that's 100Mb right there.

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
http://www.rcn-ee.com/

[William Hermans]

You want to know a really cool thing about all this ? You can take one of the premade images that is whatever  . . . wipe the rootfs paritition, and replace it with Roberts bare-fs rootfs. Viola, ~64MB BBB.

After that add whatever you want via apt-get install . . .

For me personally with just base needs and openssh-server, my rootfs sits at about 137MB in size. There are still some other thing I want to add, which will probably at least double the size, but still . . .

[William Hermans]

I should point out however, at least last time I checked that bare-fs does not come with openssh-server as I kind of hinted at above. So you will need access to the serial debug terminal at least to install a ssh server . . .

[Robert Nelson]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 7:13 PM, William Hermans <yyr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I should point out however, at least last time I checked that bare-fs does
> not come with openssh-server as I kind of hinted at above. So you will need
> access to the serial debug terminal at least to install a ssh server . . .

Yeah, i took out everything not required to run "dpkg/apt-get" so it's
pretty bare. ;)

In the process i found out dpkg relies on a huge perl package. As
that's about the biggest package in that image.

[William Hermans]

Robert, one thing I have been kind of  wondering that perhaps I should know( which I do not ). What is the package that hmm I do not really know how to describe it . . . ok like if you issue the command;

dpkg-reconfigure dash

or tzdata, or whatever else package wise. On a normal PC you get kind of a 8 color console "interface"  with yes on one side no on the other whcih highlight when you use arrow keys or tab. Which package is this ? I know the default "configuration screen" for bare-fs is teletype. BUt I was wondering the name of this package, and how much does it add to the image size ?

[Eric Fort]

here's a neat search tool I just learned about:

https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents

lets you search packages by their conternts.

going there, and searching for dpkg-reconfigure shows the packages that contain it.  it liiks like you're looking for debconf or maybe cdebconf.  configure-debian looks like another hit that may take this a step further.

Eric

[William Hermans]

I think its deb-conf, but not sure. this is something I should know, but ... dont.

[Eric Fort]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Robert Nelson <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Eric Fort <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://debian.beagleboard.org/images/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img.xz
> > - 470MB
> > and
> >
> > https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz
> > - 153MB
> > are indeed different.
> >
> > could the naming convention used in each place be differentiated so one
> > knows what they are getting?  I.E.
> > BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-YYYY-MM-DD-size-type.img.xz with type being
> > descriptive such as bare, netinst, console, GNOME, KDE, BLOAT, MORE-BLOAT,
> > BIGGER-BLOAT, kitchen-sink, every-existing-debian-package-preinstalled, and
> > somewhere in there "will-no-longer-fit"!  Might the smaller images be also
> > made available / linked to on beagleboard.org?
>
> Sure, I can rename them "lxde" and "console".  One of the issues for
> me on getting them on beagleboard.org. TI/beagle people like to verify
> it, so they take a day or two.  The images on rcn-ee.net are merely
> monthly snapshots, i do boot test them, but if we find an issue, it
> usually has to wait till the next month. (although it's been pretty
> regression free as of late)

If they're built from the same base as it looks like they are then generally missing software has no additional bugs or in the case of must haves can be added or updated afterwards.

 
>
>
> >  The images offered on
> > beagleboard.org may make a good 5 minute demo but they are so stuffed
> >  that after doing apt-get update and apt-get upgrade on a new image one is
> > left with somewhere in the 10-20MB range.  try to install anything for real
> > work like lm-sensors & i2c tools and you end up with no space left on
>
> i2c tools should be installed by default. ;)

hmm, I don't think I found some of the utilities that should have been there....  no matter, trying to install that after doing an upgrade (which upgraded a total of 4 packages) put me into no space left territory ans someone really may want to play with media files which there's not enough space left for installing even a basic player or 2.

 
>
>
> > device.  forget about even thinking about installing what you need to play
> > mp3 or video files.  The smaller images really are needed, and adding a type
> > field to the naming would be really helpful, as well as letting people know
> > where images can be had of the type needed for their use.  Those working
> > mostly over serial and ssh really don't get much benefit from the graphical
> > desktop and all the software it requires, thus a smaller image is extremely
> > useful.
>
> Another thing, we could start purging the "man" pages and other things
> under /usr/share/ but those built-in stuff is one of the nice things
> about debian.
>
> and if you don't use chromium, that's 100Mb right there.
>

the man pages are nice and really don't take much space so I'd vote for keeping them (for that which remains installed).  anything that requires X to run along with X itself can go, but I realize others may want that so  differen't images for differing needs I guess.  I look forward to getting the smaller image installed.


actually, for lack of hitting send immediately, I'm using the https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz image and it's pretty sweet.  only a couple hunderd MB used with lots of space left (as it should be).  The network even works with dhclient preinstalled and running on eth0 so it gets assigned an address on my network via dhcp and I can ssh in.  Couple things I noticed as being different though.  first off one has to login as Debian:temppwd (no root login, and password required), sudo must be used (which one should probably do anyway), and reboot/shutdown/halt/poweroff are all missing (probably for lack of the systemd package) so the only means to reboot the machine is via pulling the power plug (or possibly pressing reset which I didn't think of until just now....) both of which require physical access to the machine.

Eric

 
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Robert Nelson
> http://www.rcn-ee.com/
>

[Eric Fort]

definitive answer:

it's already there.....  part of the debconf package....  somehow the path misses it.

try:

sudo /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

works like a charm.

seems reboot, shutdown, halt, and poweroff are there as well (found in sbin) but the path again misses those as well.  yea, no need for systemd (though I'm certainly not opposed to it for consistency sake with the larger demo image that gets posted.  thus far Ive installed 3 packages I use often, "less, screen, configure-debian & bash-completion", but no big deal that they are not there though I'd love to see them included.  All in all great job on a small extremely usable debian image!  It's what ought be offered as standard as it's so much easier to add what you want and need then to remove what you don't.  just a couple tweaks as mentioned and it's ideal.

Thanks Robert!

Eric

[Robert Nelson]

> actually, for lack of hitting send immediately, I'm using the
> https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz
> image and it's pretty sweet. only a couple hunderd MB used with lots of
> space left (as it should be). The network even works with dhclient
> preinstalled and running on eth0 so it gets assigned an address on my
> network via dhcp and I can ssh in. Couple things I noticed as being
> different though. first off one has to login as Debian:temppwd (no root
> login, and password required),

Yeap, out of the box it's a little more secure via personal
preference. The beagleboard.org image has root enabled by default to
help transition people from Angstrom..

You can get root back by:

sudo passwd root

(to disable)
sudo passwd -l root

I blanked out the root password, ssh, sudo/etc via:

https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder/blob/master/target/chroot/beagleboard.org.sh#L456

> sudo must be used (which one should probably
> do anyway), and reboot/shutdown/halt/poweroff are all missing (probably for

They exist, it's just that a normal user doesn't have /sbin/ in the
path, i patched the bb.org image with:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/blob/master/mods/debian-add-sbin-usr-sbin-to-default-path.diff

So, "sudo reboot" works, but "reboot" doesn't.

> lack of the systemd package) so the only means to reboot the machine is via
> pulling the power plug (or possibly pressing reset which I didn't think of
> until just now....) both of which require physical access to the machine.

[Eric Fort]

This image *is* as it should be then as one really ought not be doing system reconfiguration and reboots as a mere mortal user (I certainly don't want my users doing these things!).... but one gets used to the image they've been using.  Thanks again for the work you put into this.  I, most definately, and most of the community individually owe and ought buy you a beer (or whatever your taste may be) given the opportunity.  (same goes for Gerald and others on this list that stand out as being helpful and making this all work for the greater community)

Eric

[Eric Fort]

btw, is there a non-flasher version of https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz   available or what happens if I put this image into a board (white) that has no eMMC onboard?  just how badly will it barf and what exactly do I end up with?

Eric

[Robert Nelson]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 8:48 PM, Eric Fort <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> btw, is there a non-flasher version of
> https://rcn-ee.net/deb/flasher/wheezy/BBB-eMMC-flasher-debian-7.5-2014-05-15-2gb.img.xz
> available or what happens if I put this image into a board (white) that has
> no eMMC onboard? just how badly will it barf and what exactly do I end up
> with?

It's basicly this one:

https://rcn-ee.net/deb/microsd/wheezy/bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-06-2gb.img.xz

Ran into an odd 'flasher' script bug, so quickly released a "2014-05-15"..

I hopeing to push out the June release this week, so the date stamps
between "microsd" and "flasher" directories will match again.

[Eric Fort]

well after:

 sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez bluez-tools lm-sensors festival bzip2 wireshark zip alsa-oss oss-compat timidity pmidi ffmpeg mplayer sox mpg123  fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs less screen bash-expansion configure-debian

as well upgrading the kernel

I still actually have space left to play within 2GB.  some of Debian's dependencies can be quizzical at best and increase bloat, such as why in the heck did the above install samba?.....  oh, well.. at least it can now share files with poorly secured windows boxen in strange and unknown places, lol.

Eric

[Charles Kerr]

I have to agree, the small version debian version works great!  I installed it, put my build-essentials on, added the arm development, vim, and ca-certificates.  I am up and running, ssh'ing in and doing my development.  Plenty of room left on my 2Gb eemc.  

So this works fantastic!   I haven't done any startup scripts or time scanning, I am assuming I would have to do something like an apt-get install systemd and an apt-get install nftp  to get those setup?

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[Eric Fort]

If you need systemd, you can install it.... but unless you need it, plain ole init works fine.  but yea, the idea with a bare image in that you choose and install just what you need.  so install what you need and go from there.

Eric

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[sels...@gmail.com]

On 02/06/14 07:09, Eric Fort wrote:
> some of Debian's dependencies can be quizzical at best and increase bloat, such as why in the heck did the above install samba?

Lots of the crap that gets pulled in aren't actually dependencies at all..

Can I suggest having a look at something like:
http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2009/01/07/howto-tell-apt-get-not-to-install-recommends-packages-in-debian-linux/
The exact options and where you have to put them has changed over time, but you get the idea.

[Robert Nelson]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 1:09 AM, Eric Fort <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:
> well after:
>
> sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez bluez-tools lm-sensors festival bzip2
> wireshark zip alsa-oss oss-compat timidity pmidi ffmpeg mplayer sox mpg123
> fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs less screen bash-expansion
> configure-debian
>
> as well upgrading the kernel
>
> I still actually have space left to play within 2GB. some of Debian's
> dependencies can be quizzical at best and increase bloat, such as why in the
> heck did the above install samba?..... oh, well.. at least it can now share
> files with poorly secured windows boxen in strange and unknown places, lol.

samba gets pulled in from bluetooth. I think it's the default file
backend for bluetooth file transfers.