Building a Debian Testing Console image

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1

As in title, the image builder stuff really amuses me and I’d really like to build the image in the topic title.
Actually, the configuration file is this one:
https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder/blob/master/configs/rcn-ee_console_debian_testing_armhf.conf

The just one thing I’m not completely sure about is the line 35, as it lists a few packages and I need just the last one for the BBB.
Does anyone tested it? Does it build and works? :slight_smile:
And if I build it in a QEMU VM, will I have problems?

2

Also, online is written how to build an image but not how to make an eMMC flashable one… What should be changed?

3

As in title, the image builder stuff really amuses me and I'd really like to
build the image in the topic title.
Actually, the configuration file is this one:
https://github.com/beagleboard/image-builder/blob/master/configs/rcn-ee_console_debian_testing_armhf.conf

That one is actually right here:

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian#Debian_Testing_.28jessie.29

The just one thing I'm not completely sure about is the line 35, as it lists
a few packages and I need just the last one for the BBB.
Does anyone tested it? Does it build and works? :slight_smile:

To build it, run:

./RootStock-NG.sh -c rcn-ee_console_debian_testing_armhf

And if I build it in a QEMU VM, will I have problems?

QEMU is always hit and miss, give it a run, but most likely it'll
stall out when cloning the git repo.

Regards,

4

Pass: "--bbb-flasher" to ./setup_sdcard.sh and it'll set up the
uEnv.txt to call the init script in single user mode.

Regards,

5

Thanks! Just to know, Cloud9 IDE is disabled, right?
And I should tweak the console script in the target/chroot directory for installing it, correct?

6

The "rcn-ee_console_debian_stable_armhf" config target doesn't install
Cloud9 IDE, nor does it call any secondary chroot scripts.

In "bb.org-debian-stable" which is used to create the offical bb.org images:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder/blob/master/configs/bb.org-debian-stable.conf#L51

It calls:
chroot_script="beagleboard.org.sh"

Which runs: https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder/blob/master/target/chroot/beagleboard.org.sh

and does a bunch of bb.org customizations.. (essentially anything you
can't just "sudo apt-get install xyz")

Regards,

7

So, by enabling install_node_pkgs I should be able to install Cloud9 IDE, right?

8

Sure.. I've tried to separate those sections by features..

Since you want Cloud9, you'll also have to enable the
debian.beagleboard.org repo so you can grab nodejs-legacy
https://github.com/RobertCNelson/omap-image-builder/blob/master/configs/bb.org-debian-stable.conf#L41

Regards,

9

Robert, which version of nodejs is nodejs-legacy ? I have tried to install cloud9 myself with very minimal success. As in I got it to install, but it was not functioning correctly. However . . .

$ node -v
v0.10.15
$ npm -v
1.3.5
$ express --version
3.10.5

I think I am using newer binaries. All information I’ve read seemed to indicate that older versions of Nodejs, and perhaps express were needed to install correctly.

10

Jason got us a "special" cloud9 ide binary that works with node
v0.10.x branch. The open source version still requires node v0.8.x

Regards,

11

Hmm, I wonder how much space install_node_pkgs would eat up. My install would probably double, or more. Right now im at . .

$ sudo du -h /
191M /

With Nodejs, express, and socket.io( not to mention my own experiments ) I had to build seperate rootfs’s to achieve this though. One with deps for building Nodejs so I could build my own deb, and of course the one I use now for testing.

Anyhow this is why I did not care much about cloud9 so much, but I did see a talk Jason Kridner did( on the PRU’s ), and using cloud9, where I thought it was kind of neat.

Thanks for the info Robert, I’ll keep this on the back burners for the time being.

12

Perfect!
Just to know, shouldn’t Cloud9 IDE included by default even on a console build?
So people won’t have X and lots of unused stuff but they’ll have a really handy IDE to develop.
At least, this should be used by default in stable console build…

This is my idea, but I wanted to discuss it :slight_smile:

13

Giovanni,

No, it uses a substantial amount of disk space. Over 200M last time I looked. Not everyone will need or want to use it. Also the dependencies( Nodejs, NPM, etc ) will use a fair amount of space as well.

I did some testing on my own before, and I had a very small install for what I had installed. Somewhere around 91M total size. After installing Nodejs with NPM, and socket.io, I’m up to 191M. Then once I installed cloud9, I was up to around 425M total disk space.

Personally, I dont need cloud9. I write code on my Windows workstation using sublime text 2. Where I could also cross compile for the BBB using Linaro’s Windows toolchain binaries. However I do not. I cross compile on Debian x86, or I compile natively on the BBB when needed.

Then there are other use cases . . .

Anyway, I think there is a neatness factor to cloud9. It is kind of cool / neat, and would be fun to toy around with. But at the end of the day it is something that is not needed, with steep diskspace costs.

14

Besides, it would be very simple for someone who needed such an image to create one.

  1. Starting with the console image you install all the necessary packages for your usecase.

  2. gzip the whole rootfs

  3. extract where needed, when you want to revert / duplicate.

15

Or maybe, a script for installing Cloud9 IDE could be provided.
It’s kinda a bare copy-paste of the function already present in ‘target/chroot’ scripts with in addition an ‘apt-get install nodejs other-dependencies’