### Installing Debian 11.0 on an APU4 board ### | |
So I acquired this little APU4 board from the good folks at PC Engines. It | |
is a little board with 4 gigabit interfaces. The intention is to use it as | |
my home router. | |
I've downloaded the Debian 11.0 netinst ISO and have written it onto a USB | |
pendrive. Since there is no graphic chip on this board, I've connected my | |
PC over a RS-232 serial link and launched minicom (settings: 115200, 8N1). | |
The APU4 board happily booted from the USB pendrive and presented the | |
Debian installation screen. Hurray. But the joy didn't last long, because | |
as soon as I tried to move forward, the system presented me with such | |
unwelcoming message: | |
"Undefined video mode number, Press <ENTER> to see video modes available, | |
<SPACE> to continue, or wait 30 sec" | |
After some fiddling around I found out that the solution is to edit the | |
kernel arguments in the first install screen (by pressing TAB) and editing | |
the default arguments: | |
> /install.amd/vmlinuz vga=788 initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz --- quiet | |
to this: | |
> /install.amd/vmlinuz vga=off initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz --- quiet | |
console=ttyS0,115200n8 | |
From there, the installation went smoothly, just like on a VGA console. | |
Once the instllation was over, the system was presenting a login screen on | |
the serial port without me having to worry about anything console-related. | |