Debian trixie (13) image 1.0 released for B3

[MouettE]

Hello everyone,

I've just released the debian trixie image for the B3. As usual for the debian images, this image is constructed from 3 different projects : the bookworm OS image itself, an install/rescue system and an installer script.

Current users of the bookworm image can also directly upgrade their systems using standard system tools. More details below.

First the link and quick howtos for install and upgrade:

• b3-trixie-install-1.0.zip (sha1: 9a42ac81e08bdfe4a0a00f76bde3d2bcfe69677e)

Quick install howto

This works the same way as the bookworm image:

• Unzip the downloaded file on a fat-formatted usb key with a partition table
• By default the installer will wipe the entire disk. If you wish to keep the existing data of your device, edit the install.ini file inside the install directory and set wipe to false at the bottom of the file. The installer will then only format the first partition of the drive.
• Plug the usb key on the B3 and apply power while pushing the rear button.
• The rescue/install system will start, format the drive, extract the trixie image and reboot the server.
• By default the network is configured for dhcp on both network interfaces. It can be changed in the install.ini file. The installer will copy the network settings from install.ini to the trixie system by default. This can also be changed in the install.ini file.
• If the LED turns red, something went wrong. Turn off the server and post the install.log file which is created in the install directory of the key so I can help you out.
• When the LED is solid blue you can ssh into the box with user 'excito' (no quotes) and password 'excito' (no quotes). Then you can 'su' ; the root password is 'excito' (no quotes). Note that on the first boot the system generates new ssh keys, it can take a minute or two before the ssh server is reachable after the LED turns blue.
• Once you're logged in I strongly recommend to set the locale and timezone of your server (its defaults are POSIX and UTC). Run the following commands :
  

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  dpkg-reconfigure locales
  dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
  

Quick upgrade howto

I recommend you go through the trixie release notes which include upgrade instructions.. The only b3 specific task you need to do is to manually update the excito-release package which will convert the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/excito.list to the new format.

That being said if you want to go fast and don't mind fixing broken stuff after the upgrade here is a very quick-and-dirty how-to :

• Update packages to the latest version with apt update and apt upgrade
• Update the excito-release package:

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  wget http://repo.excito.org/excito-release-trixie.deb
  dpkg -i excito-release-trixie.deb
  rm excito-release-trixie.deb
  rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/excito.list

• Update your apt repositories configuration files (except for excito which is handled by the previous step) and replace bookworm with trixie ; it is also recommended to upgrade to the new format. The install image uses the new format.
• run

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  apt update

  and

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  apt full-upgrade

• reboot the b3, check the running kernel with uname -a (should be a 6.12.x kernel) and check services with systemctl status
• Fix whatever needs to be fixed
• run

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  apt autoremove --purge

  to cleanup old packages.

OS image contents

The trixie OS is a very minimal debian install with only the core packages needed to start and ssh into the server. The image was bootstraped directly from standard debian utils (not built from upgrade of a previous version). There is a github repository which describes all the steps taken to build it.

Linux kernel

The kernel used is Linux LTS 6.12.x series with Excito patches. This is actually the series used in debian and it's LTS upstream. Sources are available on github.

As for the previous version, the kernel will automatically be built regularly against the official 6.12 releases. Note that newer bookworm 6.1 kernels will no longer be built.

Miscellaneous

• Excito-specific packages (kernel and button and led management) are available in a debian repository I maintain and host my personal server. The image is pre-configured to use it so further upgrades can be installed with apt tools. Everything is on github too.
• U-Boot tools are installed and configured so you can play with u-boot if you dare. WARNING this is risky business, use it at your own risk.
• The root password is 'excito' (without quotes) and I've also created an excito user with the same password. Note that by default you can not ssh directly as root with a password.
• SSH host keys are generated on the first boot and it takes a few seconds.
• The default network configuration is DHCP for both interfaces. It may be overridden by the install.ini configuration.

The install/rescue system

Full sources and rudimentary compilation instructions are available on github.

The installer script

The installer script is pretty much the same as before and is still configured through the install.ini file on the USB install key. It's heavily commented so all the options can be understood and changed accordingly.

Also in rescue-only or if reboot is disabled, the install script on exit will also still animate the LED to dictate the first IP address of the box. It's bonus and will hopefully make it easier to know the DHCP-attributed address of the server.

Conclusion

As always ask as many questions as you want I will be more than happy to answer them.

Charles

[ahoff]

Thank you.