Preparing the Compact Flash card

Debian 6.0 can be installed on the Alix board.

Choosing the flash disk

GOOZE offers SLC Compact Flash (CF) disks, which are suitable for frequent reads and writes and include a disk controller.
We did not notice any defect, as the controller will organize space to save the CF lifetime.

A full Debian installation demands around 2GB of space.
If you need to install a lot of Debian packages, 4GB is enough.

Preparing Compact Flash cards

To prepare a Flash card, you should be running GNU/Linux.

Plug a Compact Flash (CF) card to your computer (not tha ALIX board) and note on which device it resides. In our case, our flash card is on /dev/sdc.

The exact name of the partition /dev/sd[b,c,d]1 depends on the available slots.
Adapt it to your needs.

Be warned that as a super-user, you may destroy a working partition if your fail to locate your CF card.

Using fdisk or Gnome Gparted, create an empty 15 Mb ext2 partition on /dev/sd[b,c,d]1 with flag "debian"
Most of the installer will be downloaded from Internet, so you don't need a large partition.

Mount the newly created partition on your computer as /media/debian

Download Debian netboot installer from GOOZE mirror:

Save this file in your home, not on the flash.

Now, you should execute commands as root.
Warning: in case of error, this may destroy your system.

Now, assuming that your compact flash disc is on /dev/sdc, run these commands:

Basically, the script will:

• Transfer the Debian installer to your flash card.
• Adapt the installer to boot from ALIX serial console.
• Install grub2 to your flash card.

You may view the grub.cfg file below, which includes support for serial console.

Downloading GOOZE Debian installer Flash cards

This alternative solution is suitable for all systems.

Download Debian installer image for Compact Flash (CF) disk:
http://download.gooze.eu/embedded/debian/images/debian.tar.gz

Unpack:

This will create a minimal 512M installer image:
debian.img

Copy the installer image to your CF.
Make sure you know what you are doing, in case of failure, you may erase your main disc.

Warning: this will destroy all information on your CF:

where /dev/sd[b,c,d] is the location of your compact flash.

Please adapt to your actual configuration.