Debian 10 on the TS-7180
Debian 10
Debian is a community run Linux distribution. Debian provides tens of thousands of precompiled applications and services. This distribution is known for stability and large community providing support and documentation. The installation is specific to our board, but most Debian documentation applies:
Debian 10 - Getting Started and writing an Image
Once installed, the default user is "root" with no password.
This image can be written to a USB drive, a µSD card, or to eMMC. For development, a USB thumbdrive will be simplest. If a bootable USB drive is connected this will take priority over other boot media. Plug in a USB drive and check the last output from "dmesg" to get the USB disk. For example, this may be /dev/sdc.
# Erase all older partitions
sudo sgdisk --zap-all /dev/sdc
# Create one GPT Linux partition
sudo sgdisk -n 0:0:0 -t 0:8300 /dev/sdc
# Create a filesystem and mount
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc1
sudo mkdir /mnt/usb/
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb/
# Extract downloaded image:
sudo tar --numeric-owner -xf ts7180-debian-buster-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/usb/
sudo chmod 755 /mnt/usb/
sudo umount /mnt/usb/
These commands will also work while booted from a USB drive to rewrite the eMMC. Instead of /dev/sdc you would use /dev/mmcblk1, and instead of /dev/sdc1 you would use /dev/mmcblk1p1.
Debian 10 - Configuring the Network
The network in Debian is configured /etc/network/interfaces.d/. For complete documentation, see Debian's documentation here
Some common examples are shown below.
DHCP on eth0. Create the file: /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0
auto eth0 allow-hotplug eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp
Static IP on eth0. Create the file /etc/network/interfaces.d/eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.0.2.7/24
gateway 192.0.2.254
These will take effect on the next boot, or by restarting the networking service:
service networking restart
Debian 10 - WIFI Client
| Note: | The latest image for this platform as of April 28th, 2022 has known issues with the Wi-Fi driver due to incompatibility with cfg80211 powersave modes.
If using Wi-Fi, it is strongly recommended to bring up the Wi-Fi interface, and then run This issue will be addressed in future images and has already been addressed in our kernel sources. We will continue to provide updates as we receive them from the Wi-Fi module manufacturer. |
Wireless interfaces are also managed with configuration files in "/etc/network/interfaces.d/". For example, to connect as a client to a WPA network with DHCP. Note some or all of this software may already be installed on the target SBC.
Install wpa_supplicant:
apt-get update && apt-get install wpasupplicant -y
Run:
wpa_passphrase youressid yourpassword
This command will output information similar to:
network={
ssid="youressid"
#psk="yourpassword"
psk=151790fab3bf3a1751a269618491b54984e192aa19319fc667397d45ec8dee5b
}
Use the hashed PSK in the specific network interfaces file for added security. Create the file:
/etc/network/interfaces.d/wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid youressid
wpa-psk 151790fab3bf3a1751a269618491b54984e192aa19319fc667397d45ec8dee5bTo have this take effect immediately:
service networking restart
For more information on configuring Wi-Fi, see Debian's guide here.
Debian 10 - WIFI Access Point
| Note: | The latest image for this platform as of April 28th, 2022 has known issues with the Wi-Fi driver due to incompatibility with cfg80211 powersave modes.
If using Wi-Fi, it is strongly recommended to bring up the Wi-Fi interface, and then run This issue will be addressed in future images and has already been addressed in our kernel sources. We will continue to provide updates as we receive them from the Wi-Fi module manufacturer. |
First, hostapd needs to be installed in order to manage the access point on the device:
apt-get update && apt-get install hostapd -y
| Note: | The install process will start an unconfigured hostapd process. This process must be killed and restarted before a new hostapd.conf will take effect. |
Edit /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf to include the following lines:
interface=wlan0 driver=nl80211 ssid=YourAPName channel=1
| Note: | Refer to the kernel's hostapd documentation for more wireless configuration options. |
To start the access point launch hostapd:
hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf &
This will start up an access point that can be detected by WIFI clients. A DHCP server will likely be desired to assign IP addresses. Refer to Debian's documentation for more details on DHCP configuration.
Wi-Fi Concurrent Client / Access Point
| Note: | The latest image for this platform as of April 28th, 2022 has known issues with the Wi-Fi driver due to incompatibility with cfg80211 powersave modes.
If using Wi-Fi, it is strongly recommended to bring up the Wi-Fi interface, and then run This issue will be addressed in future images and has already been addressed in our kernel sources. We will continue to provide updates as we receive them from the Wi-Fi module manufacturer. |
The Wi-Fi device on this platform supports concurrent operation of client and access point (STA and AP). Please see the "Wi-Fi Client" section above first to connect the Wi-Fi module, in STA mode, to an external AP. This demo showcases the Wi-Fi module starting its own AP mode via hostapd with a simple static IP address while also being concurrently connected to a separate AP.
The 'hostapd' utility is used to manage the access point of the device. This is usually installed by default, but can be installed with:
apt-get update && apt-get install hostapd -y
| Note: | The install process may start an unconfigured 'hostapd' process. This process must be killed before moving forward. |
Modify the file /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf to have the following lines:
ssid=YourWiFiName
wpa_passphrase=Somepassphrase
interface=p2p0
auth_algs=3
channel=<channel>
driver=nl80211
logger_stdout=-1
logger_stdout_level=2
wpa=2
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
| Note: | The channel used for AP must match the channel the STA is using! Be sure to set 'channel=...' in the above file to a proper channel number. |
| Note: | Refer to the kernel's hostapd documentation for more wireless configuration options. |
In order for the concurrent modes to work, a separate virtual wireless device must first be created. Note that hostapd.conf above lists interface=p2p0, a second interface with this name must be created:
iw wlan0 interface add p2p0 type managed
The access point can then be started and tested by hand:
hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf &
An IP address can be set to p2p0:
ifconfig p2p0 192.168.0.1
From this point, other Wi-Fi clients can connect to the SSID YourWiFiName with the WPA2 key Somepassphrase with a static IP in the range of 192.168.0.0/24, and will be able to access the platform at 192.168.0.1. More advanced configurations are also possible, including bridging, routing/NAT, or simply separate networks with the Wi-Fi module connecting to a network and hosting its own private network with DHCP.
Debian 10 - Installing New Software
Debian provides the apt-get system which allows management of pre-built applications. The apt tools require a network connection to the internet in order to automatically download and install new software. The update command will download a list of the current versions of pre-built packages.
apt-get update
A common example is installing Java runtime support for a system. Find the package name first with search, and then install it.
root@tsa38x:~# apt-cache search openjdk default-jdk - Standard Java or Java compatible Development Kit default-jdk-doc - Standard Java or Java compatible Development Kit (documentation) default-jdk-headless - Standard Java or Java compatible Development Kit (headless) default-jre - Standard Java or Java compatible Runtime default-jre-headless - Standard Java or Java compatible Runtime (headless) jtreg - Regression Test Harness for the OpenJDK platform libreoffice - office productivity suite (metapackage) openjdk-11-dbg - Java runtime based on OpenJDK (debugging symbols) openjdk-11-demo - Java runtime based on OpenJDK (demos and examples) openjdk-11-doc - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) documentation openjdk-11-jdk - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) openjdk-11-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless) openjdk-11-jre - OpenJDK Java runtime, using Hotspot JIT openjdk-11-jre-headless - OpenJDK Java runtime, using Hotspot JIT (headless) openjdk-11-jre-zero - Alternative JVM for OpenJDK, using Zero openjdk-11-source - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) source files uwsgi-app-integration-plugins - plugins for integration of uWSGI and application uwsgi-plugin-jvm-openjdk-11 - Java plugin for uWSGI (OpenJDK 11) uwsgi-plugin-jwsgi-openjdk-11 - JWSGI plugin for uWSGI (OpenJDK 11) uwsgi-plugin-ring-openjdk-11 - Closure/Ring plugin for uWSGI (OpenJDK 11) uwsgi-plugin-servlet-openjdk-11 - JWSGI plugin for uWSGI (OpenJDK 11) java-package - Utility for creating Java Debian packages
In this case, the wanted package will likely be the "openjdk-11-jre" package. Names of packages can be found on Debian's wiki pages or the packages site.
With the package name apt-get install can be used to install the prebuilt packages.
apt-get install openjdk-11-jre
# More than one package can be installed at a time.
apt-get install openjdk-11-jre nano vim mplayer
For more information on using apt-get refer to Debian's documentation here.
Debian 10 - Setting Up SSH
Openssh is installed in our default Debian image, but by default openssh does not permit root logins, and requires a password to be set. Additionally, a host key is required if one hasn't already been created on the target board. To allow remote root login:
sed --in-place 's/#PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/PermitRootLogin yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
systemctl restart ssh.service
/bin/ls /etc/ssh/ssh_host*key >/dev/null 2>&1 || ssh-keygen -A
passwd root # Set any password
If you ssh to this system it will now support ssh as root.
Debian 10 - Starting Automatically
A systemd service can be created to start up headless applications. Create a file in /etc/systemd/system/yourapp.service
[Unit]
Description=Run an application on startup
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/your_app_or_script
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
If networking is a dependency add "After=network.target" in the Unit section. Once you have this file in place add it to startup with:
# Start the app on startup, but will not start it now
systemctl enable yourapp.service
# Start the app now, but doesn't change auto startup
systemctl start yourapp.service
| Note: | See the systemd documentation for in depth documentation on services. |