Hi, I tried to use the original debian installer as described on
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/armhf/ch05s01.html.en in order to install a genuine debian on a BananaPi (and to get rid of homebrewn images). Unfortunately, with the Jessie Boot-Images the screen remained completely black, no network traffic at all. With the Boot-Images from stretch, the boot process was visible until it jumped in the kernel, and again turned black. Keyboard completely ignored. Although the boot process offers to abort the boot process „with any key”, it does not respond to the keyboard. Again, no network traffic (but then, it tries to boot over the network when pulling out the memory card within the boot process so that it can't read it's kernel). According to the web pages mentioned above the problem is that linux assumes the UART as the console. It takes a UART adapter to connect to the console port and to take control of the boot process. One of the web pages mentioned that a workaround is to replace u-boot with a self-compiled recent version. This is quite impracticable. I have to deal with one or two dozens of Banana Pis, each contained in a case, and creating an installation process suitable for non-experts. Connecting to the UART pins is no option. Therefor I'd suggest * boot code that uses the grapical console (which is obviously possible since stretch's boot code displays several things), or * boot code that opens a network connection and allows to configure over the network. The current boot images seem to be rather unusable / too difficult to use for regular users. regards Hadmut
