Headless install possible?

Guys,

I see the suggestions to the right while i’m typing this. Great feature :slight_smile: I clicked them all but non of them answers my question

I want to install Ipfire on an orange pi 5 but i have no monitor and keyboard to begin with.

Is there a headless ssh installation option?

Thanks

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Hallo @theo

Welcome to the IPFire community.

If you have no monitor or keyboard access to your Orange Pi 5 then you will need to use the serial console connection approach. See this wiki page on the serial console.

https://www.ipfire.org/docs/installation/serial

As the Orange Pi 5 is not listed in the ARM page on systems that users have installed IPFire on, it may or may not work. However the best way is going to be to try it and see.

https://www.ipfire.org/docs/hardware/arm

Based on the above ARM hardware page IPFire has been tried on the following Orange Pi systems.

Orange Pi R1 Plus
Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS
Orange Pi PC2
Orange Pi Zero Plus

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serious??

Why no ssh?? Like armbian, works like a charm

SSH demands a configured network connection. This config is done by IPFire setup.

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And after Iit’s configured, can i use SSH? Or a web admin?

Maybe i have a com USB laying around.

You guys really need to fix this.

There’s a marked opportunity for firewalls on arm

Installation of an OS on a HW board means, you have to use the basic user interface. Other interfaces are defined and configured by the installation.
The basic interfaces are

  • serial, low demands and well developed over many years
  • keyboard/video/mouse, well known through the ‘standard’ desktop systems

Well, you could make a basic boot shell which loads all the nework drivers and AFTER that start the installation manually with a command. :slight_smile:

Like raspbian-install or armbian-install do

I realy hope to have an option to install the system on nvme AND the bootloader on spi flash.

otherwise i have to skip you guys. I’m sorry

raspbian-install or armbian-install do a basic configuration of the OS image on the SD card. This is running on some other system with some other OS.
To achieve this with IPFire, a bunch of installer programs would have to be supplied and maintained.

The IPFire install process adapts more to the small dev team. The team can focus on development of the OS.
Each system has some sort of console and boot loader ( supplied by the BIOS or board support package ). Using only these is an easy and reliable way to install the OS.

But you are free to develop some tools to adapt the images for your needs. If the solution is safe and interesting for other users, you can upload it by the known ways for development ( to be found in the wiki ).

I have had a quick check on the following Firewalls

pfsense
opnsense
ng firewall
smoothwall
endian

None of them provide the ability to install via ssh. They only provide installing via video/keyboard or serial console.

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that is a joke.

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I would be nice if you can fix something so the IP fire os is installed on nvme drive and the boot loader on spi flash so we don’t need a crappy sd card.

Hi theo,

You may want to take a look at FireMyPi on github. My brother and I built it to configure headless IPFire installations for our family network on the Raspberry Pi. It uses udev to automatically configure red0 and green0 based on the drivers used for the Pi onboard nic and common nic dongles so running setup is not needed. I’m not sure what chipset for the nic the Orange Pi’s use so you may need to tweak that part of the code for the Orange Pi, but we use it to build custom IPFire core images and burn them to micro sd to boot our Raspberry Pi’s which are all headless.

Regards,
Stephen

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Thanks Stephen, i already saw your github page. But sadly, that’s too difficult for me to build. Or i missed the point :slight_smile:

But this text:

Refer to the FireMyPi Administrator’s Guide for complete instructions and guidance.

Leads to a source code, not to a manual

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It leads to HTML code of the manual. This is the manual. Maybe Stephen can show how to read it.:wink:

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Hi theo,

Yeah, as @bbitsch mentioned, on the github page, it shows the un-rendered html, you would need to download the html and drop it into your browser. There is a release on the repo page that has everything in it. If you download that and look in the doc directory the manual is there.

Regards,
Stephen

Edit: Actually you want to have the whole doc directory to load the admin guide from because there is also a css there that is needed for the page to render correctly.

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That’s why you guys can make a difference.

If you can make SSH install, system on nvme/ssd and boot loader in psi flash…

People are screaming for Arm firewalls. Raspap has even the basis functions only in their payed version…

FireMyPi does just what you want, I think.
Configuration of the OS outside the target HW. Maybe it is not as comfortable as you dream of. But doing these steps separate gives you more knowledge of what you do.
IMO, you’ll not find a windows ‘clicking’ solution.

BTW, people are screaming for ARM firewalls because they think the ARM architecture is less used than Intel/AMD ( by bad guys ) and Raspberry Pi is just a board for low money. That’s all.

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@theo
great entertainment :piñata:

maybe someone can tell you about
the 'unattended.conf' :man_shrugging:

please keep the info comming about your progress
placing the bootloader inside the spi-flash and
the ipfire-payload on the nvme :scroll: :bulb:

You can “flash” the nvme drive (the same way you flash an SD Card).

But you still need a Serial Console to answer all of the set-up questions.

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To keep you guys posted:

I decided to move the opi5 to a tv because the firemypi was more complicated then moving a physical device :slight_smile:

But! The opi5 gives no hdmi output :frowning:
When i flashed armbian back to the sd it booted with hdmi output again

So, hdmi wise: ipfire isn’t compatible with an Orange pi 5.

Now i’m forced to fire my pi, i’ll keep you posted.

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