Revisione di arm64 Chromebooks Trisquel Installation del Lun, 02/10/2025 - 08:10

The current Trisquel 11.0.1 arm64 installer ([https://cdimage.trisquel.info/trisquel-images/trisquel-netinst_11.0.1_arm64.iso here]) has been reported to have problems starting on Libreboot’s supported amr64 Chromebooks. Originally reported on a no longer accessible forum post [https://trisquel.info/fr/forum/canoeboot-has-uefi-support-arm64-chromebooks-miniiso-installer-doesnt-seem-want-work here], the problem arise after choosing "Install" while booting the install ISO. The screen stays black without any signal of activity or progress, while the expected behavior would be to continue the next steps of the installation.

To circumvent this problem, this tutorial shows you how you can install Trisquel from a SD card Debian 12 installation until a better option is found and documented.

==Install Debian arm64 into a micro SD==

You might follow the instructions shown [https://libreboot.org/docs/uboot/uboot-debian-bookworm.html here] in Libreboot's website with the difference that we’ll clone the installer to a USB stick instead to a micro SD,
since we will use a SD as the place where we will be installing Debian to. Most USB stick are type A,
so you will need an adapter or a hub to connect the stick to the USB type C on the computer. We will
reserve the computer’s internal MMC drive intact as the place we will be installing Trisquel into. You
should be able to select the USB stick on the Libreboot boot process no problem, and the installation
process should be really straight forward, just select the micro SD as the target for the installation, it’s
name should be “mmcblk1”, since number 0 is the internal MMC drive. In my case, choosing to encrypt
partitions on the installation on the external SD made the installer hang every time I tried, but since I’m
not planning to use Debian for any other reason but to install Trisquel I didn’t mind and start the
process without it.

==Get Trisquel’s debootstrap scripts==

Install debootstrap on a working Trisquel computer (no matter if x86 or arm64), and browse to
/usr/share/debootstrap/scripts/. What you want to do is to copy the scripts there to get them to the micro
SD Debian in the Chromebook you want to install Trisquel into. You might copy all of them but my
guess is that only the following are really needed:

* aramo
* trisquel
* trisquel-common

You might use a USB stick copy the files over, but you should know that the “aramo” file is a sym-link,
and if your stick is formatted FAT you won’t be able to copy it. It seems that “aramo” is just a sym-link
to the “trisquel” so you might re created the sym-link once you copy it back to Debian. Or if you are
lazy as I am, just format your stick as NTFS.

==Start a root session==

Start Debian from the micro SD on the chromebook, then open terminal an run “su --” to start a root
session.

==Install debootstrap==

Run “apt install debootstrap”.

==Paste the debootstrap scripts we got from Trisquel==

We’ll paste the files we got from Trisquel to the same route /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts/ on Debian.
To make it easy, it is possible to use the following command to move all files from one place to
another:

mv /* /usr/share/debootstrap/scripts/

==Prepare partitions==

We will now prepare the internal MMC drive for Trisquel. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to use an
encrypted partition for it. I might re write this tutorial some other time to do it into an non encrypted
one, which would probably reduce the complexity, but you might figure it out on your own.
Lets install some requirements before we continue:

apt install cryptsetup lvm2

Then lets create a new gpt partition table for our internal MMC:

sudo parted /dev/mmcblk0
mklabel gpt
quit

We will now create the partitions. Run the following commands:

sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

And use the following options: n (to create a new partition), (to select default),
(again to select default), +537M (to make it 537MB size), Y (to remove signature), t (to change
partition type), 1 (to make it EFI)

We have created the EFI partition, but we’ll be making 2 more, so we proceed as follow:

n, , , +1G (for boot partition)
n, , , (to use the entire left space as the LURK encrypted partition)

This is where the encrypted partition installation differs from a regular one. In a regular one you would
create a swap partition instead of the boot one.

Finally use fdisk with “w” to apply changes an exit fdisk. Now we are going to format every partition
with the corresponding format by running:

sudo mkfs.fat -F 16 /dev/mmcblk0p1

For the first partition and:

sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/mmcblk0p2

For the second.

The third partition will be our encrypted LURK partition. After using the following command it will
ask you for a password. Make sure to remember it.

sudo cryptsetup luksFormat --hash=sha512 --key-size=512 --cipher=aes-xts-plain64 --verify-passphrase /dev/mmcblk0p3

Next we’ll open the encrypted partition:

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/mmcblk0p3 CryptDisk

Then it is suggested that we use the following command to completely erase every possible data left in
this partition, which would increase our privacy and OPSEC. Depending on wether or not we have used
the computer for a while with our personal info, it is up to you to decide if it’s worth it or not, since it
will take quite some time. Although considering our MMC is so little, its probably not that bad.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/CryptDisk bs=4M

With the second to last command we run, we named our LURK partition as ‘CryptDisk’, and we use
the following command to create virtual volume vg0:

sudo pvcreate /dev/mapper/CryptDisk
sudo vgcreate vg0 /dev/mapper/CryptDisk

Now we create both swap and the system’s root partitions inside vg0. If we desire to have a separate
home partition this is where we would do it. I have no idea how to choose a size for swap. I’m
choosing to have it haft the size of ram, since it seems is the default size chosen by default on Trisquel’s
installer.

sudo lvcreate -n swap -L 2G vg0
sudo lvcreate -n root -l +100%FREE vg0

We’ll now format this partitions:

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/vg0/root
sudo mkswap /dev/vg0/swap

==Use debootstrap to install Trisquel==

First will create a directory that we’ll use to mount the root partition:

mkdir /mnt/deboot

And then we mount it:

sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/vg0/root /mnt/deboot

Finally we can make debootstrap do its magic on it:

sudo debootstrap --arch arm64 aramo /mnt/deboot https://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel/

You may chose a different mirror that is closer to you.

If everything went fine you will get the following message:

Base system installed successfully

If you didn’t get this message, maybe you had the same issue I had, where debootstrap complains about not being able to download some packages. Don’t worry, just run debootstrap again and it will finish downloading the packages that were left of and finish successfully.

==Preparing the chroot environment==

Copy the mounted file systems table. It keeps the df command happy. (It will be overwritten upon
boot.):

sudo cp --remove-destination /etc/mtab /mnt/deboot/etc/mtab

Until your new install is booting on it's own, we'll borrow these from the host.

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/deboot/dev
sudo mount -o bind /proc /mnt/deboot/proc
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/deboot/sys

==Enter chroot==

Enter Trisquel’s just installed system with:

sudo chroot /mnt/deboot /bin/bash

==Generate fstab==

We are going to add some lines to /etc/fstab:

echo "/dev/mapper/vg0-root / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1" >> /etc/fstab
echo "/dev/mapper/vg0-swap none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

For the root and the swap partitions, and then:

echo "UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/mmcblk0p2) /boot ext2 defaults 0 2" >> /etc/fstab
echo "UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/mmcblk0p1) /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1" >> /etc/fstab

For the boot and efi partitions.

Now we also need to add the LURKS encrypted partition to /etc/crypttab:

echo "CryptDisk UUID=$(blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/mmcblk0p3) none luks,discard" >> /etc/crypttab

==Mount boot and efi==

Mount the boot partition:

mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /boot

Now create an efi mount point in /boot:

mkdir /boot/efi

And mount efi partition in it:

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot/efi

==Personalize your installation==

Give a name to the computer:

echo "" > /etc/hostname

Configure your locales. Make sure you select C.UTF-8 and UTF-8 along side any other you may want
to add:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Create a password for root.

passwd

Create a normal user:

adduser

==Prepare apt==

Add some additional Trisquel repositories:

echo "deb https://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel aramo-security main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb https://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel aramo-updates main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Update and upgrade:

apt update
apt upgrade

==Install a kernel and desktop==

Install a kernel with:

apt install linux-generic

I recommend mate against kde because of this computer’s memory:

apt install trisquel-base-recommended lightdm-gtk-greeter trisquel-base trisquel-recommended trisquel

But you could use this for kde:

apt install triskel triskel-recommended sddm trisquel-base trisquel-base-recommended

==Grub Installation==

Install the grub package:

apt install grub-efi-arm64

Next we are going to install grub in /boot and /boot/efi with removable media support and nvr off:

grub-install --boot-directory=/boot --efi-directory=/boot/efi --no-nvram –removable

Finally run:

update-grub

==Finishing the installation==

Clean the package cache:

apt-get clean

Run “exit” to leave chroot, and “exit” again to exit su --, and close the terminal window.

And you are done. You should be able to reboot you system and boot Trisquel. Normally Libreboot gives you the SD card as the first entry, so the second entry has our Trisquel boot.

==References==

This is where I found how to do things:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/991875/is-there-a-program-to-install-ubuntu-from-a-linux-system

https://askubuntu.com/questions/918021/encrypted-custom-install