We begin the installation by downloading the distribution kit. Go to the page with the distribution. We have two options for the operating system:

• – Armbian Bionic (based on Ubuntu)
• – Armbian Buster (Debian)

Debian has a reputation as a more stable distribution, while on Ubuntu we have more recent software packages available. Ubuntu was created based on Debian and these are very close operating systems. You can install any. I chose Armbian Bionic.

Download, unpack. In the archive, in addition to the image itself, there is a license file, a file with a PGP signature, and a sha256 checksum file.

We need to write the image to the SD card. It is recommended that you use a card with a Speed ​​Class of at least 10. A card with this class should provide a minimum write speed of 10 Mb / s. The marking of the speed class for conventional cards is a number inscribed in the Latin letter C. Newer cards support the Ultra High Speed ​​interface. By analogy with the marking of ordinary cards, the speed class of UHS-cards fits into the Latin letter U. These are cards with a higher speed. Any will do. Card capacity from 2 GB to 64 GB. Cards with a large volume usually have a higher speed class. But taking into account that eMMC flash (8GB) is installed on Orange Pi Zero +2 H5, the SD card speed class is not important for us. We plan to boot from the card once, and then transfer the system to internal memory. If the card is slow, the installation will take longer, but then the system will be transferred to the internal memory and everything will work with optimal performance. After installing the system, we will test the speed of exchange with the SD card and internal memory.

To transfer an operating system image to a card, armbian developers recommend using Etcher.

Download, install Etcher.

After starting Etcher, select the image that we want to record. If several external media are connected, we specify on which media we will record and go to recording.

During the transfer of the operating system, we note that the write speed to the SD card that I had is 12.4 MB / s. Later we will compare this speed with the write speed to the internal eMMC flash.

To communicate with Orange Pi, we need another program. This is Putty.

Download, install Putty.

We insert the card into the Orange Pi and apply power to it.

There are several ways to connect to the Orange Pi. You can connect the keyboard to the USB connector and watch the signal on the monitor via an HDMI cable (or even through RCA Video out if you prefer). I connect via USB OTG. At the same time, you need to remember that for Orange Pi you need a power source that can provide a current of 2 A. The standard USB port of a computer can usually give a current of up to 500 mA, so you need to connect the Orange Pi either through a USB port expander with a fairly powerful external power source, Either supply additional power to the Orange Pi via other USB connectors, or through the GPIO comb.

When connected via USB OTG to a computer, Orange Pi is defined as an ELMO GMAS device on one of the COM ports. In the “Device Manager” we need to look at the COM port number that was assigned to this device. In my case, it was COM5.

We connect to the Orange Pi via the COM port using Putty. The port speed is 115200 bits / s.

Upon successful connection, we will see an invitation to enter a username and password. At the first login, we use the login root and password 1234 Is the default password. When entering the password, do not be confused by the fact that the system does not seem to react at all to the input (it does not display the entered characters with asterisks, if you are used to it). Everything is fine, the password is entered. Apparently, this was done so that outsiders do not see the number of characters in your password. We will immediately be asked to change it. Enter the default password again, and then twice, the new password.

We will be asked to create the first user. We create.

After that, I immediately transfer the system to an internal flash. You can do otherwise. You can first make your settings for the locale, time zone, make other changes, and then transfer the system. Then you will have a backup of your initial system on the SD card.

Transferring the operating system to eMMC is done by the command:

nand-sata-install

Choose the type of file system. If you have no particular preferences, then ext4 is a good choice.

The system transfer will begin. Formatting and recording will take time, which will depend on the speed with which your SD card allows you to work.

Upon completion, we will be asked to restart the Orange Pi.

After turning off the power, you need to remove the SD card, otherwise the next time you start the system, it will boot from it again. Power on the Orange Pi again and connect using Putty. We log into the system under the user that we created at the first boot.

We pay attention to the inscription in the greeting:

“( Menu-driven system configuration (beta): sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config ) ”- to facilitate system configuration, we are offered to install the armbian-config utility. So we will do:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config -y

On devices with a processor from Allwinner (our case), after switching to boot from NAND or eMMC, it is recommended to clear the bootloader signature with the command: dd if = / dev / zero of = / dev / mmcblkN bs = 1024 seek = 8 count = 1 (need to replace / dev / mmcblkN to the correct name).

We need to find out the name of the disk from which the system boots. You can do this with the command:

df

Answer:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 175308 0 175308 0% / dev
tmpfs 49072 1628 47444 4% / run
/ dev / mmcblk2p1 7370336 885020 6091208 13% /
tmpfs 245348 0 245348 0% / dev / shm
tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% / run / lock
tmpfs 245348 0 245348 0% / sys / fs / cgroup
tmpfs 245348 4 245344 1% / tmp
/ dev / zram0 49584 1320 44680 3% / var / log
tmpfs 49068 0 49068 0% / run / user / 1000

I highlighted in red the value that we need.

Your name will most likely be the same, but it’s better to check.

dd if = / dev / zero of = / dev / mmcblk2p1 bs = 1024 seek = 8 count = 1

Answer:

1 + 0 records in
1 + 0 records out
1024 bytes (1.0 kB, 1.0 KiB) copied, 0.00151764 s, 675 kB / s

We proceed to the system configuration using armbian-config:

sudo armbian-config

After entering it, you will need to enter a password.

Set up the network. Orange Pi Zero +2 H5 does not have ethernet, so you need to connect to the network via WiFi. In the menu, select “Wired, wireless, Bluetooth, access point.

Next, select “Manage wireless networking.”

We select the network to which we want to connect and connect.

Set the time zone and locale. To do this, select “Timezone, language, hostname” in the menu.

Let’s start with the time zone. Select “Change timezone” from the menu and set your region and city.

Next, set the locale. To do this, select “Reconfigure language” in the menu.

Uncheck en_US.UTF-8 and mark ru_RU.UTF-8. In the next window, we are prompted to set the default locale for the system. Choose ru_RU.UTF-8.

You can change something else, but I will not change any other settings and just exit the configuration program.

Then I installed three more packages (this is not necessary):

sudo apt install tree wavemon mc -y

By launching wavemon, we can conveniently view the parameters of our WiFi connection.

When starting Midnight Commander, I noticed that the interface does not display correctly. This is fixed by editing the file / etc / default / locale. This file must be opened in the editor and changed the encoding to ru_RU.UTF-8. Here’s what you should get:

# File generated by update-locale
LANGUAGE = ru_RU.UTF-8
# LANG = en_US.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES = ru_RU.UTF-8

After that, in order for the settings to take effect, you need to log in.

In Midnight Commander I ran into another problem (this can be seen on the video) – the hot keys for viewing and editing the file – F3 and F4 – did not work for me. It is treated with Putty settings. On the “Terminal-> Keyboard” tab, when connected, put the “Linux” mark in the “The Function keys and keypad” options.

We are almost done. We only need to test the exchange rate with the internal flash. The test is carried out by the command

sync; dd if = / dev / zero of = tempfile bs = 1M count = 100; sync

The exchange rate I got 66.4 MB / s. Compared to the SD card that I used, the exchange speed turned out to be more than 5 times higher.

In the folder in which we tested, a voluminous file appeared. If you also performed a test, then do not forget to delete it. You can do this with the command:

rm tempfile

That’s all. Next time we’ll look at how to install Home Assistant on Orange Pi.