Debian Bookworm Installation Notes

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Jonah Bron

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Oct 19, 2025, 11:25:33 PMOct 19
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I managed to get a working installation of Debian Bookworm running on my NiuBi. It's consumed a lot of time to get right so I thought I'd document the steps I needed to take to get it working.
  1. Install firmware
    1. https://neil.brown.name/gnubee/
    2. Download gnubee-6.1.1-gbpc2.bin
    3. Copy to USB drive (formatted to FAT32) as "gnubee.bin"
    4. Connect the USB drive to the NiuBi and boot
      • Light blinks for about 5 or 6 minutes.
      • Wait until it is solid.
  2. Boot firmware (reference)
    1. Disconnect SD card
    2. Disconnect USB drive
    3. Rename "gnubee.bin" to something else (or delete)
    4. Add a "gnubee-config.txt" file with "CONFIGURE_NET=yes".
      • This is alternative to booting into the firmware with the physical button. I found timing it right to be too unreliable.
    5. Connect USB drive to NiuBi
    6. Connect Ethernet cable from the Blue port to a switch/router
    7. Boot
    8. Check router connected devices to find the assigned IP address.
    9. ssh root@{IP ADDRESS}
      • Password is "GnuBee"
    10. Insert SD card
  3. Install Debian
    1. Get keys for Debian 12 (reference)
      1. On main computer, run
        wget https://ftp-master.debian.org/keys/release-12.asc -qO- | gpg --import --no-default-keyring --keyring ./debian-release-12.gpg && ssh root@{IP ADDRESS} "cat > debian-release-12.gpg" < debian-release-12.gpg
        • Can't be done directly on the NiuBi because it doesn't have gpg installed.
    2. Edit the debootstrap call in the /config file
      1. Change the mirror URL to "http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian"
      2. Change the version from "stable" to "bookworm"
      3. Add "--keyring=debian-release-12.gpg" argument
    3. Run /config
    4. Switch Ethernet cable to black port
    5. Disconnect USB drive
    6. Reboot
  4. SSH into new system
    1. Login with the password set during /config
    2. Run `uname -a` to check expected kernel (6.1.1)
    3. Run `cat /etc/debian_version`
    4. Run 1.1.1.1 to confirm network access
As a last step, I highly recommend connecting the SD card to your computer and backing up the contents of GNUBEE-ROOT to a tar zip.

cd /mnt && tar -cJf GNUBEE-ROOT ~/GNUBEE-ROOT.tar.xz

(assuming the SD card partition is mounted to /mnt/GNUBEE-ROOT)

This will make recovery much easier if (when) you make a bad change.

Thanks to everyone else who's posted their experience, I gleaned a lot from many of the threads here, and thanks to Niel for producing such a great firmware!

Miles Raymond

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Nov 4, 2025, 5:33:37 PM (7 hours ago) Nov 4
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I'd recommend upgrading the firmware to Brett Neumeier's 6.5.5 build (which also supports zram) archived at:

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