Boot method: USB stick
Image version: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/bookworm_di_alpha2/arm64/iso-cd/debian-bookworm-DI-alpha2-arm64-netinst.iso
Date: 2023-03-08
Machine: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3
Processor: ARM Cortex-A53
Memory: 1G
Partitions:
Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev devtmpfs 395476 0 395476 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 91436 500 90936 1% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p5 ext4 30196596 1749452 26887900 7% /
tmpfs tmpfs 457172 0 457172 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1 vfat 307016 21048 285968 7% /boot/efi
tmpfs tmpfs 91432 0 91432 0% /run/user/1000
Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn):
n/a
Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Initial boot: [O]
Detect network card: [O*]
Configure network: [O]
Detect media: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Clock/timezone setup: [O]
User/password setup: [O]
Install tasks: [O]
Install boot loader: [E]
Overall install: []
Comments/Problems:
I have tested the Bookworm Alpha 2 installer on a RPi 3B+ in EFI mode. To do
so, I first had to add the UEFI Firmware for Raspberry Pi 3 to the SD card onto
which I planned to install Debian. The firmware images are available here:
https://github.com/pftf/RPi3/releases
On another Linux system I created a msdos (not GPT) partition table on the SD
card with fdisk:
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdf
Created a new partition with 'n', specified it should be primary with 'p',
assigned it number '1', First sector '2048', Last sector '+300m'. Changed the
partition type with 't', specified hex code 'e' for "W95 FAT16 (LBA)", made it
bootable with 'a', saved with 'w'.
Then I created a FAT16 filesystem on the partition with:
$ sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdf1
Mounted /dev/sdf1, unzipped RPi3_UEFI_Firmware_v1.38.zip onto it.
At this point, the RPi3 was able to boot regular vanilla d-i images from a USB
stick. I used debian-bookworm-DI-alpha2-arm64-netinst.iso.
- Both wifi and wired ethernet were found, though for some reason the wired
interface did not always manage to get configured via DHCP. I tried a few
times, and when wired ethernet did not work, the wifi interface did. It seemed
hit-or-miss.
The installer also detected that some non-free firmware was required by the
brcm module, but I don't think this is the reason for the issue, which I
suspect would have otherwise been always reproducible?
- The raspi-firmware package did not get installed, and I think it should
probably have?
- To ensure that Guided partitioning would not automatically change the
partition table to GPT, but leave it as msdos, I have manually created a root
partition. I haven't tested whether this was actually necessary though.
- Rebooting into the freshly installed system unfortunately did not work. This
is because bootaa64.efi (and indeed the whole /boot/efi/EFI/boot directory)
was missing. I could fix this by booting the installer again in Rescue Mode and
choosing "Force GRUB installation to the EFI removable media path", which
added /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT with:
ema@raspi:~$ sudo ls -l /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
total 5160
-rwx------ 1 root root 856064 Mar 8 2023 BOOTAA64.EFI
-rwx------ 1 root root 91520 Mar 8 2023 fbaa64.efi
-rwx------ 1 root root 4322752 Mar 8 2023 grubaa64.efi
- depthcharge-tools-installer was very keen in letting me know that I do not
have a ChromeOS board. The message "depthcharge-tools-installer: Not
installing to non-ChromeOS board." was repeated a total of 21 times.
ema@raspi:~$ sudo grep -c "non-ChromeOS board" /var/log/installer/syslog
21
Mentioning that once, if at all, would probably be enough. :-)
So all in all the only truly serious problem was the fact that grub had to be
installed to the EFI removable media path. I briefly discussed this with Sledge
on irc and he mentioned that it would be good to have a list of platforms
requiring such workaround, so that we can apply it when needed.
Please find the contents of /var/log/installer/ attached.