MNT Reform system images
These disk images contain a bootable full Debian installation which can be
flashed to an SD-card or USB flash drive from which your Reform can then boot
directly into a full desktop installation. The image contains two partitions:
one for /boot
and one for and /
. U-Boot has been written to the correct
offset at the beginning of the image. Log in as root
(empty password), change
the root password using passwd
and create yourself a normal user using
adduser. The rescue system contains sway
and wayfire
for a graphical
desktops.
If you do not want to operate your Reform from the SD-card or USB stick (slow
and wears down the flash storage quickly) you can copy its contents to eMMC or
NVMe after having booted your Reform from the SD-card or USB drive. The scripts
reform-flash-rescue
, reform-migrate
and reform-setup-encrypted-nvme
from
the reform-tools
package help with that task. Alternatively, you can use the Debian Installer to install Debian onto your Reform like
you would install Debian on any other platform.
Table of Contents
- MNT Reform 2 or Rack Reform
- MNT Pocket Reform
- How to verify GPG signature
- How to flash to SD-card or USB flash drive
- non-free blobs
- Source
MNT Reform 2 or Rack Reform
CPU Module | Debian 12 Bookworm Stable | Debian 12 Bookworm Stable (backports kernel) |
---|---|---|
NXP i.MX8MQ (default) | reform2-system-imx8mq.img.xz (994M, GPG sig) | reform2-system-imx8mq-bpo.img.xz (1.1G, GPG sig) |
NXP Layerscape LS1028A | reform2-system-ls1028a.img.xz (994M, GPG sig) | reform2-system-ls1028a-bpo.img.xz (1.1G, GPG sig) |
RCM4 with Banana Pi CM4 (Amlogic A311D) | n.a. | reform2-system-a311d-bpo.img.xz (1.1G, 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-system.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 system image using dd
. Make sure to replace
/path/to/reform2-system.img
by the path to the system image you downloaded
and /dev/mmcblkXXX
by the block device belonging to your SD-card or USB flash
drive.
xzcat /path/to/reform2-system.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 |
Source
The images are generated by the following scripts: https://salsa.debian.org/reform-team/reform-system-image