# from Pinebook to Pinebook Pro

Approaching winter solstice, and thus reduced available solar power, I
have been using my Pinebook more. This year, I am also noticing more
and more how slow the browser is; maybe spending summer and fall on
faster laptop is part of it, but running a browser in 2GB of system
ram is increasingly not an option.

=> https://www.pine64.org/pinebook/

I have had a Pinebook Pro for a while, which has features like 4GB of
ram, faster cpu cores, a nicer screen and capable of using NVMe for
storage. It also has a black metal case instead of a white plastic
one. Still not a powerhouse, but actually fairly usable, at least by
comparison to the earlier Pinebook!

=> https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

I've run GNU Guix on the Pinebook Pro for a while, largely because it
was a little easier early on to add support for a custom kernel to
guix.

=> https://guix.gnu.org/ GNU Guix

And while guix is fun enough, at the end of the day Debian is a
little better choice for me on an arm64 laptop.

=> https://debian.org Debian

I had already experimented with creating a Debian live image that
supported booting both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro, and that worked
well enough to test it.

=> https://salsa.debian.org/vagrant/two-pinebooks-walk-into-a-bar/-/tree/latest Two Pinebooks Walk into A bar

In debian-installer, had worked on enabling support for the Pinebook
Pro earlier in 2021, but only tested a basic installation; the
installation went pretty smoothly.

=> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/commit/5cc51b55d9ce2504765227f927077b672c6e863e debian installer support

Unfortunately, on first boot, there was nothing on the screen; it was
only responding on the serial console, waiting for a passphrase for
the encrypted volume. This vaguely rang a bell, and sure enough, in
the initramfs-tools git repository is a patch I had added some months
ago that enabled the display on the screen.

=> https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/commit/a5d9b3250843ec76be6f1901f69776a31d5e2431 enable display

So, I log in via the serial console, but for some bizarre reason, sudo
isn't installed, and there was no root password. Fun! I workaround
this with the old init=/bin/bash trick and set a root password.

I added the kernel module (pwm-rockchip) needed to the initramfs to
get the screen loaded early enough to enter the decryption passphrase,
but... the prompt was still asking on the serial console. So I added
to the kernel boot arguments console=tty0.

Now I have a display on the screen where it is asking for a
passphrase! Great! I type the passphrase. Nothing happens. At all. I
can see on the serial console some boot logs, but it is not asking for
a passphrase there.

Reboot. Er, power off and power on, because reboot is a little
sketchy.

Switch back to serial console, boot. Keyboard works fine. After a few
tries, including a botched attempt at adding all kernel modules
manually was thwarted by usrmerge (the modules are now in /usr/lib
rather than /lib, needed to append the modules in the correct place),
I find the right kernel module (fusb302) to enable the keyboard in the
initramfs.

Switch back to console=tty0, enter in decryption
passphrase, boots! Pushed fix to initramfs-tools git.

=> https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/commit/7e15676afd38fc024373fcdbb5d578b03ad65b09 keyboard patch

I installed a graphical environment (sway), and also a web browser
(firefox-esr) and tested a few web pages; it seemed quite responsive!
Everything seemed to be going quite nicely.

So I turn off the Pinebook which I was using for a serial console,
boot the Pinebook Pro, enter in the decryption passphrase and it
proceeds to boot... and then just shuts down immediately before the
login prompt appears. This rang a bell back from one of my earlier
installs on GNU Guix.

Something was deciding it would be a good time to suspend, and while
odd timing, would be kind of ok if resuming from suspend was
possible. It is not, to my knowledge.

I plugged back in the serial console to see if I could get the message
about what was failing. And it booted fine. I unplug the serial
console, boot, and it goes to suspend. Plug serial console back in,
boots fine.

Worked around this by configuring suspend right out of the picture.

/etc/systemd/sleep.conf.d/donotsuspend.conf:

    [Sleep]
    AllowSuspend=no
    AllowHibernation=no

Now it boots without having to have a serial console plugged in! No
need to carry two laptops around just to boot one of them!

I log in, I start installing all my favorite packages, and start
getting it ready to be my New Computer.

Firefox just started freezing, or only displaying some things on the
screen. I tried upgrading to the newer firefox-esr from debian sid;
that didn't even start at all.

Next steps... I might try installing firefox-esr from debian bullseye
(the "stable" release). At some point firefox used to be finicky on my
now tried and true, if a bit slow Pinebook, maybe it just needs time
to adjust!

Almost ready, almost ready.

2021-12-09