Installing Debian over serial console

Installing Debian over serial console on APU board

Posted by Pawel Suwala on Sep 24, 2017

Installing Debian on APU boards is easy, if you know the steps.

Step 1:

Download netinst, amd64 image from here: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

Step 2:

burn the image on USB. 

If you are using Linux, use dd:

sudo dd if=debian-9.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdX

sdX needs to be replaced with sdb, sdc, sdd or similar. Do not include a number. If you flash "sdb1" it won't work.

if you are using Windows, burn the image using Rufus: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Step 3: 

Insert the USB into the APU board, and use putty to connect over the serial cable, as described here.

Step 4: 

Debian installer will boot and show you the following screen:

Press H, enter the following parameters and press Enter.

install console=ttyS0,115200n8

Do not include the "vga=off" option seen on the screenshot. Without this option you will get couple of warnings from the installer, but the entire process will be much simpler over all.[注]：按tab编辑对应的选项的命令行，我本地是改成vga=off的，否则即使加上console=ttyS0,115200n8还是会提示找不到显示设备。

When you get an error/warning, press Enter about 3 times. The installer will eventually accept that there's not graphics card and will go forward as usual.[注]：这里按三次会进入如下界面，我还真没试过啊，直接使用的vga=off可以安装

This tells the installer that it should use Serial console for the installation process. Follow the instructions on the screen, as usual. 

Step 5

Debian is now installed, remove the USB and boot!

[注]：到这里之后就是安装好系统了，虽然安装成功了，但是grub启动项默认还是会找显示器的，所以第一次启动需要手动改一下grub启动项，加上console=ttyS0,115200n8；并且进入系统之后，修改/etc/default/grub文件，在grub启动参数中加上console=ttyS0,115200n8，然后执行update-grub，这样以后就可以默认从cosole启动了。