Category Archives: ARM

ARM, Linux, Orange Pi 5b

Add LUKS partition to Orange PI 5b

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Yesterday I got a brand new Orange PI 5b, and installed Ubuntu 22.04 in it. Everything went smoothly. My Orange Pi 5b has 16GB RAM, 256GB MMC Disk, 8 CPU. And yes, it runs quite fast.

I guess these instructions can work for other versions of Orange PI, but this was tested for Orange Pi 5b

I plan to use it for my travel desktop, with a 14-inch LED HDMI flat screen, keyboard, and mouse.

I’m used to and can not live without having my data encrypted. So in case it is lost or stolen, my information will remain confidential.

But the recommended steps to install Ubuntu in my Orange PI 5b do not include a way to encrypt the /home filesystem

When installed, it simply splits the disk into two partitions:

  • /dev/mmcblk0p1, 512MB, where the kernel and initrd image resides, and
  • /dev/mmcblk0p2, where the / filesystem is, using the rest of the disk

I prefer not to encrypt the / filesystem, for several reasons like, it is costly, hardware-wise, having to encrypt/decrypt every time we read or write any file in the system. So I prefer only to encrypt the /home dir.

Download Ubuntu-22.04 for Orange PI 5b from

https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip/releases
Specifically, the one named “ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-orangepi-5b.img.xz”

There is no current way to install Ubuntu directly to the MMC disk, so we use two stages:

  • using another Linux workstation we copy the image to a microSD
  • Then we boot our Orange PI 5b from that SD
  • Using the provided scripts, we install, we transfer the contents of the SD to the MMC disk.
  • Finally, we power off the Orange PI 5b, remove the SD card, and we can start our Ubuntu from the MMC disk.

1- Copy Ubuntu to the SD

Do this from a Linux desktop computer, I guess it could be done in Windows or Mac as well using their tools to copy images to SD cards:

fdisk -l <- find where your SD card is. In my case, it is on /dev/sdX
xz -dc ubuntu-22.04.3-preinstalled-desktop-arm64-orangepi-5b.img.xz|sudo dd of=/dev/sdX

extract the SD card from your Linux desktop

2- Boot from SD

Insert the SD card into your Orange PI 5b and start it.

It won’t be long until it is booted, a small configuration wizard is shown, and you are in.

3- Install Ubuntu into your MMC.

My MMC is on /dev/mmcblk0, you can find it by using:

fdisk -l

and look for the MMC disk (checking the disk size for example)

This will install Ubuntu to your MMC, it may take some minutes, depending on the speed of your SD card, etc.

sudo u-boot-install-mtd /dev/mmcblk0
sudo ubuntu-rockchip-install /dev/mmcblk0

We will then install gparted, and reduce /dev/mmcblk0p2 to, for example, 25GB, leaving the rest of the disk free, and unused.

apt update
apt install gparted
gparted /dev/mmcblk0
Inside gparted, reduce /dev/mmcblk0p2 to approx 25GB

4- Create the luks partition

We can then create a new partition /dev/mtdblock0p3, create it with luks, open the luks, and format the luks mapped device:

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0 <- Create /dev/mtdblock0p3
cryptsetup luksFormat --pbkdf-memory 512000 /dev/mmcblk0p3
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/mmcblk0p3 homefs
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/homefs

NOTE: If you lose your luks password your info is lost, and there is no way to recover it easily.

chrooting into the MMC disk

Now, we will mount everything under /mnt/chroot

mkdir /mnt/chroot
mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/chroot
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/chroot/boot
mount /dev/mapper/homefs /mnt/chroot/home
mount -t proc none /mnt/chroot/proc/
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/chroot/sys/
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/chroot/dev/
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/chroot/dev/pts/

We copy the contents of /home into /mnt/chroot/home, there should not be too much info, just the skel of the user you just created when it was installed above.

rsync -avPH /home/* /mnt/chroot/home/

Configuring luks

Now we take note of the luks partition (/dev/mtdblock0p3) UUID as we will need it when defining the luks partition in the next steps:

blkid
…
/dev/mmcblk0p3: UUID="571c8ca6-4332-4fda-a856-52d8dd0d6a92"

We then chroot into /mnt/chroot

LANG=C chroot /mnt/chroot/

And edit /etc/crypttab adding just one line, notice the UUID is the one we found above!

homefs UUID="571c8ca6-4332-4fda-a856-52d8dd0d6a92" none luks,initramfs,discard

In /etc/fstab we add a new line requesting our system to mount the mapped filesystem (the one created when luks is opened) in /home:
…
/dev/mapper/homefs /home ext4 discard,errors=remount-ro 0 0

We are about to finish! We have not to indicate the system that, on boot, it should request for the luks password to decrypt the disk when booting:

echo "CRYPTSETUP=y" >> /etc/cryptsetup-initramfs/conf-hook

We then create, and update our initramfs to include the new devices/modules (dm-crypt) needed when initially booting.

update-initramfs -u

Sites consulted

I used the following sites as a guide to creating this document. They were mostly for Debian and for using luks for/in Ubuntu. And created my steps to reach my goal: to encrypt /home partition in Ubuntu 22.04 for Orange Pi 5b.

https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip/discussions/435
https://habet.dev/blog/raspberry-pi-encrypted-boot-with-ssh/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1287837/luks-disk-encryption-on-raspberry-pi-4-and-ubuntu-desktop-20-10
https://gist.github.com/cpainchaud/bac37abd5e3274c33f143c85c94dbed1

ARM, Armbian, Debian, Digitales, flrig, Raspberry, Raspberry Pi, RaspberryPi OS, Ubuntu

Compiling FLRig for raspbian/Ubuntu

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  • Download the source code http://www.w1hkj.com/files/flrig/
  • untar the source code
  • cd flrig*/
  • sudo apt-get install checkinstall libxft-dev fltk1.3
  • ./configure
  • make -j4
  • sudo checkinstall

That’s it!

ARM, Armbian, Debian, Linux, Orange Pi PC, Raspberry Pi

Agregar HP Laserjet m175A en debian buster

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  1. Instalar cupsd
    1. sudo apt install cups cups-client cups-filters cups-ipp-utils
  2. Configurar cupsd para que escuche desde 0.0.0.0
    1. cupsctl –remote-admin –remote-any –share-printers
  3. Instalar drivers para pixma
    1. apt -y install hp-ppd hplip
  4. Acceder a cupsd desde el browser: https://laip:631
  5. Agregar nueva impresora
  6. Buscar en la lista de drivers HP y la versión de pixma que tengamos
    1. buscar lentamente hp laserjet color pro m175a, está desordenado. La m176n me funciona bien, pues no me apareció la m175a
ARM, Armbian, Debian, Linux, Orange Pi PC, Raspberry Pi

Agregar canon pixma g2100 en debian buster

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  1. Instalar cupsd
    1. sudo apt install cups cups-client cups-filters cups-ipp-utils
  2. Configurar cupsd para que escuche desde 0.0.0.0
    1. cupsctl –remote-admin –remote-any –share-printers
  3. Instalar drivers para pixma
    1. sudo apt install printer-driver-gutenprint
  4. Acceder a cupsd desde el browser: https://laip:631
  5. Agregar nueva impresora
  6. Buscar en la lista de drivers CANON y la versión de pixma que tengamos
ARM, Armbian, Digitales, Linux, Orange Pi PC, RadioAfición, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi, wsjt-x

Compiling WSJT-X for armbian

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This small tutorial will show you how to build and install wsjt-x for your ARMBIAN. In my case I have an OrangePI PC board and armbian buster desktop. But this tuto should work for any other board. It should also work for any other Linux and architecture. E.g.: raspios, debian, ubuntu, etc.

I followed this tutorial for Linux Mint:

http://kb4lhp.blogspot.com/2018/12/recipe-for-building-and-installing-new.html

Lets start by installing some requirements:

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall texinfo gfortran libfftw3-dev qt5-default qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools libqt5svg5-dev qtmultimedia5-dev asciidoctor libqt5serialport5-dev libqt5multimedia5 docbook-xsl xsltproc libxml2-utils dpkg cmake libusb-dev libusb-1.0 libudev-dev

Then download the latest tgz from https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx.html ex;

wget https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx-2.2.2.tgz

Lets extract the contents of this package and cd into the directory:

tar zxf wsjtx-2.2.2.tgz
cd wsjtx-2.2.2

And then, lets configure and build wsjtx:

cmake -DWSJT_SKIP_MANPAGES=ON -DWSJT_GENERATE_DOCS=OFF .
cmake --build .

This process will take time depending on how fast is your CPU. After it finished, we will invoke the next command in order for it to build the .deb package. Pay attention you will have to modify option number 10:

sudo checkinstall

This package will be built according to these values: 

0 -  Maintainer: [ [email protected] ]
1 -  Summary: [ WSJT-X version 2.2.2 compiled by HC6PE ]
2 -  Name:    [ wsjtx ]
3 -  Version: [ 2.2.2 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ armhf ]
8 -  Source location: [ wsjtx-2.2.2 ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [ libqt5multimedia5 ]
11 - Provides: [ wsjtx ]
12 - Conflicts: [  ]
13 - Replaces: [  ]
Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: 

in here you enter “10” and add “libqt5multimedia5” (without the quotes). Then just continue and it will build the .deb:

Done. The new package has been installed and saved to
/home/radio/wsjtx-2.2.2/wsjtx_2.2.2-1_armhf.deb

Lets install it!

radio@pisdr:~$ sudo dpkg -i ~/wsjtx-2.2.2/wsjtx_2.2.2-1_armhf.deb
(Reading database … 112570 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/wsjtx_2.2.2-1_armhf.deb …
Unpacking wsjtx (2.2.2-1) over (2.2.2-1) …
Setting up wsjtx (2.2.2-1) …
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) …

And… it works! Check the version, in my case it is 2.2.2, the same I compiled and installed.

ARM, Raspberry, Raspberry Pi, RaspberryPi OS

Instalando Raspberry 3 B+ con RaspberryOS

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En este en vivo explicamos e instalamos RasberryOS en un raspberry pi 3, con esto damos un paso importante para comenzar a usar nuestro RPi

ARM, Armbian, Orange Pi PC, Pine 64, Raspberry Pi, RaspberryPi OS

Raspberry y las micro placas que abrieron el mundo al IoT.

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En este video, comenzamos una serie sobre raspberry pi, y ARM en general. Donde exploraremos diversas formas de aprovechar estos boards de muy bajo costo e interesantes prestaciones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Ko_7ceemA