Debian Installation on Kindle Touch
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[edit] Things to consider
While these instructions largely apply to other Kindles and Linux distributions, the Kindle Touch's kernel (2.6.31) is very old. The most recent version of Debian confirmed to work with this kernel is Squeeze (6). Later versions will error out with FATAL: KERNEL TOO OLD on startup. Similarly Alpine's busybox will throw a Segmentation fault if it is too new.
There have been reports of lock-ups when the image is mounted from /mnt/us, especially during installation of the image or later when using apt. Mount from /mnt/base-us instead (this seems to be safe as long as userstore is not used as USB drive - so don't connect your Kindle to a computer while the mount is active unless you know what you're doing. Another option would be to Repartition the Kindle).
[edit] Setting up Base Image
[edit] File system
Because the Kindle's default file system doesn't allow symlinks, we need to create a file system that does and later mount it. While the Kindle theoretically supports ext4, ext3 appears to be better supported.
count decides how many megabytes the image will be created with.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/debian.ext3 bs=1M count=1280 mkfs.ext3 /tmp/debian.ext3 tune2fs -i 0 -c 0 /tmp/debian.ext3 mount -o loop -t ext3 /tmp/debian.ext3 /mnt/debian
[edit] Bootstrapping Debian
debootstrap --verbose --arch=armel --variant=minbase --foreign squeeze /mnt/debian http://archive.debian.org/debian
Later, when you are on Kindle and when you have set up the chroot environment you have to start the second stage of the base installation:
debootstrap --second-stage
If your computer also runs on the armel architecture (unlikely), you can remove the --foreign flag from debootstrap and skip the --second-stage step.
The flag --variant=minbase significantly reduces the size of the debian installation. You can skip it to install more tools right away, but you can also install them later.
Transfer the image to your Kindle. If you have SSH access, this can be done usingscp /tmp/debian.ext3 ip_address_or_alias_of_kindle:/mnt/base-us/debian.ext3
[edit] Setup Chroot Environment
mount -o loop -t ext3 /mnt/base-us/debian.ext3 /mnt/debian mount -o bind /dev /mnt/debian/dev mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/debian/dev/pts mount -o bind /proc /mnt/debian/proc mount -o bind /sys /mnt/debian/sys cp /etc/hosts /mnt/debian/etc/hosts cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/debian/etc/resolv.conf
[edit] Finish Installation
Obtain shell and internet access on your Kindle, for example via Internet access for Kindle via USB.
Perform the second stage of debootstrap
debootstrap --second-stageCongratulations, you now have a full Debian installation on your Kindle that you can chroot into!
[edit] Usage of Chroot Debian
[edit] Getting a Chroot Shell
chroot /mnt/debian /bin/bash
Once you added a user to the Debian system you can login with that user account:
chroot /mnt/debian /bin/login
[edit] Other options
In case you want to have access to userstore from debian execute before chrooting:
mount -o bind /mnt/us /mnt/debian/mnt/us
[edit] Tips
[edit] Resize image
count decides how many megabytes will be added to the image.
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1 >> debian.ext3 e2fsck -f debian.ext3 resize2fs debian.ext3
[edit] apt command
Squeeze is so old that it doesn't have the plain apt command. You can get it to feel a bit more at home by creating a symbolic link:
ln -s /usr/bin/apt-get /usr/bin/apt
[edit] mount: could not find any free loop device
The Kindle only has 8 available loop devices and they aren't automatically freed. Use losetup -d /dev/loop/7 to free a device (that isn't used for a currently mounted file system). This should be fine all the way down to 1. You can make sure it's not in use for anything important using mount.
