Orange Pi Zero + Armbian Setup

I bought a couple of Orange Pi Zero (256MB) mini computers and decided to install Armbian on them.

SD Card Preparation

I used 8GB SD card for the Armbian installation.

In a terminal, I:

  • downloaded Armbian Jessie image file:
wget https://dl.armbian.com/orangepizero/Debian_jessie_default.7z
  • checked that I have 7z installed:
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full
  • unpacked the image file:
7z e Debian_jessie_default.7z
  • removed extracted files that I didn’t want to keep:
rm sha256sum.sha armbian.txt.asc armbian.txt
rm Armbian_5.24_Orangepizero_Debian_jessie_3.4.113.img.asc
  • copied the extracted image onto SD card:

Note

My SD card appears at /dev/mmcblk0. It can be different for you! Make sure you run the following command with correct of (output file) specified. Do NOT continue if you don’t know what that means.

sudo dd bs=4M if=Armbian_5.24_Orangepizero_Debian_jessie_3.4.113.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

Booting Up

I plugged in a network cable and powered the pi up via the micro USB port.

I left it for 5 minutes to do its initial setup per the instructions from the Armbian documentation.

Then I had to figure out what is the IP address of the pi, so I can ssh into it.

The IP address is assigned automatically via DHCP.

After a few trial/error attepts with ping, nmap, looking at DHCP leases at the internet modem web interface and switching the pi off/on, I finally sshed in:

ssh root@192.168.1.10

Default root password is 1234.

First logging forces password change for root and also creation of a new user with full sudo rights eg. the new user should be used for ssh into the pi.

First login to Armbian

Once I had the new user setup, I could log in using the new user:

ssh marek@192.168.1.10
marek@192.168.1.10's password:
  ___                               ____  _   _____
 / _ \ _ __ __ _ _ __   __ _  ___  |  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___
| | | | '__/ _` | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ | |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \
| |_| | | | (_| | | | | (_| |  __/ |  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) |
 \___/|_|  \__,_|_| |_|\__, |\___| |_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/
                       |___/

Welcome to ARMBIAN Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie) 3.4.113-sun8i
System load:   0.00             Up time:       10 min
Memory usage:  19 % of 241Mb    IP:            192.168.1.10
CPU temp:      30°C
Usage of /:    14% of 7.2G

Network Setup

To avoid any further adventures finding the pi’s IP address, I changed the network configuration and assigned the pi a new static IP address instead of using DHCP.

marek@orangepizero:~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for marek:
root@orangepizero:~# vim /etc/network/interfaces

Here is the new /etc/network/interfaces config:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
 address 192.168.1.136
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 gateway 192.168.1.1
 dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.8.4

Debian documentation has further info about the static IP setup, here.

Then I rebooted the pi:

marek@orangepizero:~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for marek:
root@orangepizero:~# reboot
Connection to 192.168.1.10 closed by remote host.
Connection to 192.168.1.10 closed.

After few moments I could ping the pi again at its new IP address so I sshed back in:

% ping 192.168.1.136
PING 192.168.1.136 (192.168.1.136) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.136: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.863 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.136: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.402 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.136 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.402/0.632/0.863/0.231 ms
% ssh marek@192.168.1.136
marek@192.168.1.136's password:
  ___                               ____  _   _____
 / _ \ _ __ __ _ _ __   __ _  ___  |  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___
| | | | '__/ _` | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ | |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \
| |_| | | | (_| | | | | (_| |  __/ |  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) |
 \___/|_|  \__,_|_| |_|\__, |\___| |_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/
                       |___/

Welcome to ARMBIAN Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie) 3.4.113-sun8i
System load:   0.19             Up time:       1 min
Memory usage:  16 % of 241Mb    IP:            192.168.1.136
CPU temp:      32°C
Usage of /:    15% of 7.2G

Last login: Sat Jan 14 22:16:01 2017 from 192.168.1.7
marek@orangepizero:~$

System Update

To finish the setup off, I ran apt get update and upgrade to get the pi up-to-date:

marek@orangepizero:~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for marek:
root@orangepizero:~# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

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