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The Rock Pi S card from Radxa can run Debian, Armbian, Ubuntu or Android. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to configure your computer with Debian.

Hardware

  • Rock Pi S
  • Micro SD card
  • USB cable
  • Computer

Install OS

First of all, we need to install an application that will enable us to flash the OS on the SD card inserted in your computer. balenaEtcher can be installed here (don’t forget to choose your computer’s operating system):

We’re going to download an OS in the form of an image to flash onto your SD card. Download an image to flash, such as Debian for example.

After installing balenaEtcher, launch the application and flash your OS to your SD card. This may take some time:

balenaetcher Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

Once the OS has been installed, insert the SD card into the Rock Pi S.

SSH connection

To do this, you’ll need to download terminal emulation software such as PuTTY or TeraTerm.

Then you need to connect your card as follows:

Branchement-Liaison-SSH Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

Once connected, open PuTTY and connect via SSH as follows:

ssh-parameter Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

Serial connection

To connect via a link, you can’t connect via the board’s USB and USB-C ports, which is a real shame. You need to use a USB UART-TTL adapter. For this tutorial, we’ll be using one from Rtinle. Connect the card as follows:

Branchement-Liaison-Serie Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

Once connected, open TeraTerm and connect via serial link, with the following parameters:

port-serie-parameter-1 Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

OS configuration

Once you’ve connected via serial or SSH, you’ll need to connect with the default user of your terminal emulator:

Default User:

rock

Default Password :

rock
rockpi-login Installing Debian on Rock Pi S
Parametrage-Rock-Pi-S-premiere-connexion-sous-debian Installing Debian on Rock Pi S

You can then run the following commands to update your OS:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade 

Lire le journal système :

When you encounter a problem, it’s a good idea to check the system messages:

journalctl

It is possible to pass a character string as an argument to filter what is displayed:

journalctl -u error

Connect to Wifi

  • To check that your network card is detected :
ip addr
  • To access the superuser :
 sudo su
  • To scan available WIFI networks :
nmcli dev wifi
  • To connect to your WIFI network (replace wifi_name with the name of your network and wifi_password with its password) :
 nmcli dev wifi connect "wifi_name" password "wifi_password"

Installing a Python IDE

One of the basic languages used on Linux is Python. You can install the Thonny IDE very easily using the command ( once connected to wifi )

sudo apt install thonny

Sources

  • https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS/ssh
  • https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS/dev/serial-console
  • https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS
  • https://www.sigmdel.ca/michel/ha/rockpi/rockpis_01_en.html