Debian Installer for MNT Reform

These disk images contain Debian Installer netboot images similar to the official SD-card images but prepared with all changes necessary to allow installation on the Reform. Due to non-free firmware blobs (see below) these custom images are likely going to remain necessary. Alternatively, you can use full system images to quickly try out a desktop installation on your Reform without making changes to your eMMC or NVMe.

Table of Contents

MNT Reform 2 or Rack Reform

CPU Module Debian 12 Stable (Bookworm) Debian 12 Bookworm Stable (backports kernel)
NXP i.MX8MQ (default) reform2-d-i-imx8mq.img.xz (83M, GPG sig) reform2-d-i-imx8mq-bpo.img.xz (74M, GPG sig)
NXP Layerscape LS1028A reform2-d-i-ls1028a.img.xz (83M, GPG sig) reform2-d-i-ls1028a-bpo.img.xz (74M, GPG sig)
RCM4 with Banana Pi CM4 (Amlogic A311D) n.a. reform2-d-i-a311d-bpo.img.xz (74M, GPG sig)

MNT Pocket Reform

CPU Module Debian 12 Stable (Bookworm)
NXP i.MX8MPlus (default) n.a.
RCM4 with Banana Pi CM4 (Amlogic A311D) n.a.

How to verify GPG signature

xzcat /path/to/reform2-d-i.img.xz | gpgv --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-keyring.gpg reform2-system.img.asc -

How to flash to SD-card or USB flash drive

The disk image contains the bootloader (U-Boot) as well as a partition table, so it has to be written to the SD-card or USB stick directly instead of being copied to a mounted filesystem or written onto an existing partition. As a result, writing the image to your SD-card or USB stick will destroy all the data that was on it before. Be very certain that the device you are writing the image to is indeed the SD-card or flash drive you inserted and not any other disk. The following command will print the device node of any disk you attach to your machine while the command is running:

udevadm monitor --udev --property --subsystem-match=block/disk | sed -ne 's/^DEVNAME=//p'

You can copy the d-i image using dd. Make sure to replace /path/to/reform2-d-i.img by the path to the d-i image you downloaded and /dev/mmcblkXXX by the block device belonging to your SD-card or USB flash drive.

xzcat /path/to/reform2-d-i.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblkXXX status=progress

non-free blobs

These images contain non-free material in the form of DDR training blobs, ARM trusted firmware blobs, WiFi/BT firmware and/or HDMI/eDP firmware. The non-free blobs are loaded onto the hardware early-on during the boot process and do not run on the main processor. Sometimes the blobs are optional. For example the HDMI blobs are only necessary if you need HDMI output. If you have your U-Boot on eMMC, then you do not need U-Boot on your SD-card and would thus be able to have a DFSG-free SD-card image. If you care for that, simply zero-out the respective range of bytes between the partition table and the first partition. If you are booting from a USB flash drive instead of from an SD-card, the U-Boot binary will not be used.

For more information about the differences between the modules see https://mntre.com/modularity.html#table.

CPU Module non-free blobs
NXP i.MX8MQ (default) Synopsys DDR4 training blob, Cadence HDMI blob
NXP i.MX8MPlus Synopsys DDR4 training blob, WiFi/BT firmware
NXP Layerscape LS1028A eDP display firmware blob
RCM4 with Banana Pi CM4 (Amlogic A311D) ARM trusted firmware, WiFi firmware
RCM4 with Raspberry Pi CM4 boot blob

Source

The images are generated by the following scripts: https://salsa.debian.org/reform-team/reform-debian-installer