How to create a Debian image to iMX 6Quad SABRE-SD

Prepare the host machine installing the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install debootstrap qemu-user-static

Create a mounting point, mount your SDCard and start Wheezy Debian installation, (or any other version).

$ mkdir mounting
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb2 mounting/
$ sudo debootstrap --foreign --arch=armhf wheezy mounting/

Enable QEMU ARM and second stage:

$ sudo cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static mounting/usr/bin/
$ sudo chroot mounting/ /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

Add the following line in the file mounting/etc/inittab

T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttymxc0 115200 vt100

Add the eth0 configuration above in the file mounting/etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

To enable the system to let you enter as root edit the file mounting/etc/shadow changing the first line to be like the following (remove the *):

  root::15880:0:99999:7:::

Unmount the partition and boot the board

$ sudo umount mounting/

If you feel like installing a X11 Windows Manager, in the imx6qsabresd:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install xfce4 slim

I used an already running SDCard with fsl-image-machine-test from morty and only replaced the rootfs by removing the partition content and mounting it on my PC. This process is not listed here because the process of creating the SDCard base is straight forward and present in several tutorials. However, if you need help with this process, please leave a comment.

The resultant image is not yet accelerated by GPU or VPU. The process to install the needed pieces to get the hardware acceleration will be shared in a different post.