MNT Reform apt repository
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Step 1: Adjust apt sources
- Step 2: Adjust apt preferences
- Step 3: Upgrading
- Backports
- Source
Introduction
In contrast to the apt repository
provided by MNT Research, this repository provides its content based on Debian
stable (Trixie) instead of unstable for a more reliable computing experience.
The packages in this repository are signed with a PGP key that is part of the
Debian Developer keyring shipped by the debian-keyring
package on your system
and thus there exists a trust path from your existing installation to this
repository. For more guidance regarding OpenPGP verification, see the instructions about PGP.
Adding the reform.debian.net repository for Debian Trixie to your existing MNT Debian unstable installation is of limited use after the release of Trixie. This is because if you upgraded packages to versions from unstable after the Trixie release, you cannot go back to convert your installation to Debian Trixie. Debian does not support package downgrades.
Step 1: Adjust apt sources
You can choose between three different ways to enable the reform.debian.net mirror:
Method A: Using extrepo
Install the package extrepo
and then run:
extrepo enable reform.debian.net
This will create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/extrepo_reform.debian.net.sources
with the correct contents automatically using OpenPGP signed repository
descriptions from the central extrepo mirror. If you rather trust the
locally installed extrepo-data
package you can also run:
extrepo enable --offlinedata reform.debian.net
Method B: Manually downloading deb822 sources file
You can also manually download reform_trixie.sources
and place it in
/etc/apt/sources.list.d
like this:
sudo env --chdir=/etc/apt/sources.list.d wget https://reform.debian.net/reform_trixie.sources
If you go this route instead of using extrepo
, see this
page for a method to verify that the OpenPGP key attached to your
downloaded reform_trixie.sources
is indeed the one that is also present in
your /usr/share/keyrings/debian-keyring.gpg
.
Method C: Manually adding one-line entry
If you prefer to use the one-line format of /etc/apt/sources.list
instead of
the deb822 format of reform_trixie.sources
, you have to download the key to
a custom location (for example to /etc/apt/keyrings/reform.debian.net.asc
)
and add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
:
deb [arch=arm64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/reform.debian.net.asc] https://reform.debian.net/debian trixie main
See this page for a method to extract the right key
from /usr/share/keyrings/debian-keyring.gpg
and store it in
/etc/apt/keyrings/reform.debian.net.asc
or another location of your choosing
and referenced by the signed-by
option in your one-line
apt sources entry.
Step 2: Adjust apt preferences
The original MNT Reform system image contains a preference file which
prioritizes packages from the mntre.com repository over packages coming from
elsewhere. You need to do the same with the reform.debian.net repository.
Without setting up this pinning, you run the risk of accidentally upgrading to
package versions from debian.org for those packages patched by
reform.debian.net in the small time window before reform.debian.net managed to
rebuild new package versions with the reform-specfic patches on top. To this
end, comment out or remove the existing content of
/etc/apt/preferences.d/reform.pref
and add this:
Package: *
Pin: origin "reform.debian.net"
Pin-Priority: 999
Step 3: Upgrading
You can now synchronize the package index files from their sources by running:
sudo apt update
You can verify that your apt sources are set up correctly by ensuring that the
output of the following command does include https://reform.debian.net/debian
and does NOT include https://mntre.com/reform-debian-repo
:
apt-get indextargets --format '$(SITE)' 'Created-By: Packages' | sort -u
You can verify that apt pinning via apt preferences worked as expected by
verifying the apt pin value of linux-image-arm64
was indeed set to 999 and
comes from reform.debian.net:
apt-cache policy linux-image-arm64 | grep "999 https://reform.debian.net"
If everything checks out, you can run these commands to finish the conversion:
sudo apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs
sudo apt full-upgrade
Backports
The Linux kernel from trixie-backports is provided for support for more features (automatic screen rotation on pocket reform) and more platforms (classic Reform with DSI display). To enable the backports repository, follow method B or C from above but replace trixie with trixie-backports. For example for method B, do:
sudo env --chdir=/etc/apt/sources.list.d wget https://reform.debian.net/reform_trixie-backports.sources
Or, for method C, add the following to your sources.list
:
deb [arch=arm64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/reform.debian.net.asc] https://reform.debian.net/debian trixie-backports main
And then install the correct kernel and reform-tools
package using:
sudo apt install linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64/trixie-backports reform-tools/trixie-backports
Source
The packages are generated by the following script: https://salsa.debian.org/reform-team/reform-debian-packages