OS installation - Armbian

Armbian is an operating system for ARM based boards based on Debian. It is the recommended operating system for MuxPi board.

There is also a flavour of Armbian based on Ubuntu, which should work in a similar manner to the Debian one, although it is not supported.

Installation

  1. Download the latest Stretch Armbian for Nanopi Neo [1]. You can either use torrent [3] or http [2] download. We will download via http using wget. You can install wget on Debian-based distributions with apt-get install wget:

    $ wget https://dl.armbian.com/nanopineo/Debian_stretch_next.7z

  2. Uncompress the downloaded file. It will likely be a .7z file. To extract it we will use 7-Zip [4]. You can install it on Debian-based distributions with apt-get `install p7zip-full:

    $ 7z e Debian_*

  3. Verify if the download and unpacking were successful by checking checksum:

    $ sha256sum Armbian_*.img

    Output should be the same as contents of sha256sum.sha file.

  4. Connect your SD card and check which /dev/sdX it is. You can do this using e.g. fdisk:

    # fdisk -l

  5. Copy the extracted image to your SD card.

    Danger

    Make sure your /dev/sdX device is the SD card. If performed incorrectly, next step may destroy your files unrecoverably and even stop your machine from working.

    Note

    You need to adjust Armbian_*.img name as dd tools does not take wildcards.

    # dd bs=1M if=Armbian_*.img of=/dev/sdX

    You can verify if the image was copied correctly by running:

    # sha256sum /dev/sdX

  6. Put prepared SD card in your MuxPi’s NanoPi SD card slot.

Configuration

  1. Connect NanoPi’s UART0. You can use the UART->USB converter on the MuxPi board, just connect a cable to microUSB port on the bottom of the board.

    Note

    You can omit this if you connect the device to DHCP server and connect over ssh. You will need to adjust below steps in such case.

  2. Connect to serial using either screen or minicom (or your tool of choice)

    Warning

    Change ttyUSB0 to your serial that is connected to NanoPi. If you do not have any USB UART connected, MuxPi’s converter should be ttyUSB0.

    # screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

# minicom -b 115200 -D /dev/ttyUSB0

  3. Power the device on. First boot might take some time.

  4. After system boots, you need to log in:

    login: root
password 1234

    Note

    1234 was the correct password at the time of writing this page. If it does not work, you should check FAQ section on Armbian for Nanopi Neo [1] page.

  5. You will be asked to change your password:

    You are required to change your password immediately (root enforced)
Changing password for root.
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:

  6. Next, you will be greeted with nice, colourful text and initial non-root user account configuration. Follow the interactive user creation process.

    We always create a pi user.

  7. Set static IP on the device by creating following file:

    # vim /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0

    With the following contents:

    auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address 192.168.0.2
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.0.1

    Above will work if you connect MuxPi to your machine (which will have 192.168.0.1 address) and the 192.168.0.2 address will be available. For this document purpose we will assume the IP address is 192.168.0.2.

  8. Settings need to be changed, you need to restart networking:

    # systemctl restart networking

    Or just restart the whole device:

    # shutdown -r now

  9. Now you should be able to connect to device through ssh:

    $ ssh root@192.168.0.2

    Note

    If you are not able to connect to it, it might mean that the network settings did not reload properly. It is best to restart device using serial connection from earlier:

    # shutdown -r now

  10. Configure UARTs for communication with MuxPi’s stm and for communication with DUT:

    # armbian-config

    It will ask you for internet connection but it is not required (press any key to continue)

    Go to System ‣ Hardware and enable uart1 and uart2.

    Reboot when asked.

[1](1, 2) https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-neo/
[2]https://dl.armbian.com/nanopineo/Debian_stretch_next.7z
[3]https://dl.armbian.com/nanopineo/Debian_stretch_next.7z.torrent
[4]http://www.7-zip.org/