On Fri, 2013-09-13 at 18:55 +0200, Bernhard wrote: > Package: debian-installer > Severity: wishlist > > Hello, > > Please add installer images for Raspberry Pi in architecture armel. > > There are several images available in > /dists/wheezy/main/installer-armel/current/images. > For example: there are images for qnap nas storage in images/kirkwood. > But there is no image for Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi uses an SoC in which the main processor is a multicore GPU (VideoCore IV) and the ARM core is a peripheral. The GPU must be booted first, and it is also booted from the SD card. Since there is no free software (or documentation) for the GPU, we cannot currently build an official Debian installer image for the RPi that you could write directly to an SD card. Perhaps it would be possible to build an image that could be concatenated with the GPU boot code, though. In addition to this, it requires a number of kernel drivers which are not included in mainline Linux. Comparing Linux 3.11 with the RPi branch: $ git diff --stat v3.11..rpi/rpi-3.11.y | tail -1 377 files changed, 271120 insertions(+), 1066 deletions(-) The majority of that turns out to be the addition of the rtl8192cu driver, which is not at all specific or critical to RPi: $ git diff --stat v3.11..rpi/rpi-3.11.y -- drivers/net/wireless/rtl8192cu | tail -1 163 files changed, 183009 insertions(+) But that still leaves ~90,000 lines of code that is probably needed and which still needs to be accepted upstream (or replaced with code that is acceptable upstream) before it can go into Debian. (A breakdown by directory: arch/arm/configs/ 4 files changed, 1981 insertions(+) arch/arm/include/asm/ 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) arch/arm/kernel/ 3 files changed, 18 insertions(+) arch/arm/mach-bcm2708/ 37 files changed, 6123 insertions(+) arch/arm/mm/ 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) arch/arm/tools/ 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) drivers/char/broadcom/ 4 files changed, 1174 insertions(+) drivers/char/hw_random/ 3 files changed, 129 insertions(+) drivers/cpufreq/ 3 files changed, 247 insertions(+) drivers/hwmon/ 3 files changed, 230 insertions(+) drivers/i2c/busses/ 3 files changed, 428 insertions(+) drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb-v2/ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) drivers/misc/vc04_services/ 31 files changed, 12220 insertions(+) drivers/mmc/ 7 files changed, 1852 insertions(+), 120 deletions(-) drivers/net/usb/ 1 file changed, 56 insertions(+) drivers/spi/ 3 files changed, 635 insertions(+) drivers/staging/media/lirc/ 3 files changed, 699 insertions(+) drivers/thermal/ 3 files changed, 191 insertions(+) drivers/tty/serial/ 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) drivers/usb/core/ 3 files changed, 197 insertions(+), 43 deletions(-) drivers/usb/gadget/ 1 file changed, 3676 insertions(+) drivers/usb/host/ 61 files changed, 53795 insertions(+) drivers/video/logo/ 1 file changed, 881 insertions(+), 881 deletions(-) drivers/w1/ 4 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) drivers/watchdog/ 3 files changed, 391 insertions(+) include/ 4 files changed, 38 insertions(+) sound/arm/ 8 files changed, 2203 insertions(+) Of thse I think the USB host driver is the biggest problem - it's not simply big but bloatware. It's bigger than all the mainline OHCI, UHCI, EHCI and XHCI drivers put together! So I think iIt will need rewriting for mainline.) Ben. -- Ben Hutchings If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.
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