Where to obtain a current Debian boot image for MQ-QUAD (minimal preferred)

I am trying to create a new uSD for the MQ-QUAD and am having issues doing so. I am not comfortable using the web sites (baidu.com) that are written in Chinese graphics as I do not understand them and Google fails to translate.

I have 2 images:
Orangepizero2_3.0.6_debian_bullseye_desktop_xfce_linux5.16.17.img
Orangepizero2_3.0.6_debian_bullseye_server_linux5.16.17.img

I have used both the Pi imager and Balena to try to get these onto a fresh SD card and get the fillowing errors when attempting to boot. These error messages repeat.

U-Boot SPL 2021.10-orangepi (Aug 09 2022 - 21:00:00 +0800)
DRAM:This DRAM setup is currently not supported.

resetting …

U-Boot SPL 2021.10-orangepi (Aug 09 2022 - 21:00:00 +0800)
DRAM:This DRAM setup is currently not supported.

resetting …
(ad nauseum)

My older boot SD does boot, but I cannot recall how it was built. It is currently running 3.0.8. The current Debian Bookworm image does not boot, but this one works:

U-Boot 2021.10-orangepi (Oct 05 2022 - 14:25:44 +0800) Allwinner Technology

CPU: Allwinner H616 (SUN50I)
Model: OrangePi Zero2
I2C: ready
DRAM: 1 GiB
MMC: mmc@4020000: 0
Loading Environment from FAT… Unable to use mmc 0:1… In: serial@5000000
Out: serial@5000000
Err: serial@5000000
Net: phy interface7
Could not get PHY for ethernet@5020000: addr 1
No ethernet found.

Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Kernel: Linux 5.16.17-sun50iw9
Architecture: arm64

Regards & Thanks,
Tony

where did you get the server image? the only one i see on the website is the baidu download link and it doesnt even load up for me.

The only image I was actually able to download from this site was the buster XFCE image, and it is relatively huge. I said in my post that I wanted to use a minimal image.

Since that image boots an ARMbian OrangePi release, I figured nothing ventured, nothing lost, and tried booting an image that works on an OrangePi Zero equivalent of the MangoPi board. It fails in the bootloader complaining about a memory controller (as I noted).

So to answer your question, I couldn’t get anything from the Baidu site, but I did get the “bloatware” XFCE desktop image from the Google site. It boots and then it is quite easy to shut down the stuff you don’t need. I want to see what happens if you try to graft the bootloader onto an OrangePi bookworm release but was hoping beyond hope to get some support from MangoPi as to whether or not this is a feasible solution.

Tony

Hi All,

As an FYI, I just took the only available image and upgraded to bookworm online. It came down off the site as 1506-nogpu.img.gz and appears to be working, but it is 1.5G so it is a bit bloated. I upgraded as follows:

70 sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
71 cat /etc/apt/sources.list
72 sudo apt update -y
73 sudo apt upgrade -y
74 sudo apt full-upgrade -y
75 sudo apt --fix-broken install
76 sudo apt autoremove -y
77 sudo reboot
78 sudo apt update -y
79 sudo apt upgrade -y

bracka@MangoPi:~$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: MangoPi
Icon name: computer
Machine ID: 72220208b82d41a89e94c2e17deeba01
Boot ID: 144b3305e0be4adbabec81e2008ff454
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Kernel: Linux 5.16.17-sun50iw9
Architecture: arm64

bracka@MangoPi:~$ uname -mrs
Linux 5.16.17-sun50iw9 aarch64

bracka@MangoPi:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Release: 12
Codename: bookworm

bracka@MangoPi:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
12.4

bracka@MangoPi:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 422M 0 422M 0% /dev
tmpfs 99M 2.6M 96M 3% /run
/dev/mmcblk1p1 29G 6.9G 22G 25% /
tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 16K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 492M 8.0K 492M 1% /tmp
/dev/zram1 47M 30M 15M 68% /var/log
tmpfs 99M 40K 99M 1% /run/user/1001
tmpfs 99M 48K 99M 1% /run/user/1000

bracka@MangoPi:~$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 983Mi 502Mi 190Mi 3.0Mi 368Mi 481Mi
Swap: 491Mi 14Mi 477Mi

In the vi session, I replaced all occurrences of ‘bullseye’ with ‘bookworm’. Again, it all seems to be working. The next project is to get a minimal image of ‘bookworm’ built or booting. If anybody can point me at an notes on how to set this up for something like ARMbian it would be great. This has been the bloated version of Debian that was provided, … hey, at least it works!

Lately I’m hearing crickets in terms of response.

Tony

Forgot to mention. In order to do all of this, I have connected a UART to the serial port so that I don’t get trashed when SSH gets updated. I happened to have used a PiUART, but any others will work too.

Tony

I replied to another thread with an image that I slimmed to 700 MB after installation. It is running bookworm and has all bloat removed.