Can you flash a BBG without the KiwiSDR mounted? [yes]
I had one go bad the other day and couldn't flash a new KiwiSDR image (1.803) with or without the KiwiSDR attached. The led's stop cycling after a good 30 seconds, so I assume it's hozed. Fortunately I had a spare BBG board with 1.5x that upgraded by itself. So I've ordered a new BBG for standby but was wondering if there's something on the KiwiSDR board that is required to complete the flash operation.
Comments
Yes, you can re-flash using the Beagle by itself. You'll have to use a different power connection as the BBG has a micro-USB as the 5V input vs the Kiwi's DC barrel jack.
I'm considering upgrading two kiwi 1's to debian 11 per the procedure here on the forum. One of them is on the BBG above that I pulled from another Kiwi that was moved onto a BBAI. I couldn't ssh into to the debian account with the old or new serial # or any other password but I was able to change passwords for both root and debian from the kiwi console with the passwd command and can ssh into either account.
That said, does it matter whether I step through the procedure by ssh in as root or debian? Really, I think it would only be important to save the configuration anyway, which isn't all that hard to type in again. Maybe the better question is why bother upgrading?
My guess is that some parts of the procedure requires you to be root due to permission problems. So yes, you should do the procedure as root. But if you're ssh'd in on the debian account you can always "sudo su" and give the debian password to get a root shell.
But if you really don't care about preserving the configuration (including any DX label customizations you might have made) then forget about that procedure and just create a re-flasher sd card and overwrite it.
Moving from Debian 8 to 11 is becoming almost essential now. We're experiencing more and more strange failures related to the old Debian version. I had to remove the new fast binary update feature from Debian 8 updates because some people ended up with broken installations for reasons I still don't understand. Not to mention the fact that D8 receives no security updates from debian.org anymore.
Just to clarify, I can now successfully ssh in as root or debian, you're saying root is preferred? Understood about getting off the old OS, it's probably worth doing then. Thanks
Can you flash a BBG without the KiwiSDR mounted? [yes]
https://forum.kiwisdr.com/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/20462#Comment_20462Also, since I have two kiwi's to upgrade, if I just re-flash the first, I should be able to clone the other one and make minor changes, then repeat with the second.
ssh'ing in as root, or as debian and then obtaining a root shell. They are essentially equivalent.
The clone function doesn't work as well with Debian 9+ as it did with Debian 8 because of the default restriction against being able to connect as root with D9+. So the scp that the cloning does to copy files will fail. So you have to do something about that on the clone target first before using the clone function. Like creating an ssh key on the clone source and putting it in the target /root/.ssh/authorized_keys. Or, perhaps easier, modify the target's /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change PermitRootLogin to "yes".
Then the clone function should work.
Cloning from "the other" Kiwi worked great after setting PermitRootLogin to "yes". Thanks John, both have been upgraded to debian 11.
Wayne