Debootstrap

On debian based systems, you can manually initialize an installation using debootstrap.

This whole process takes half an hour or so (depending on network bandwidth and disk setup, direct to sd-card will be slower), and will result in a 250MB root filesystem, or a 80MB tarball,

= Pre-requisites =


 * A debian based distribution.
 * package debootstrap
 * package qemu-user-static if you are doing this from a different architecture

It is assumed that your target filesystem is mounted in /mnt

Also, figure out which distribution version you wish to use. Current debian stable is called stretch, and a current ubuntu is called cosmic.

= First stage =

This step can be run from any host architecture.

debootstrap --arch=armhf --foreign /mnt/

Replace with your preferred distribution, probably stretch or cosmic.

= Second stage =

From a different host architecture
Copy qemu to the target filesystem: cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static /mnt/usr/bin/

Chroot to target: chroot /mnt /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static /bin/sh -i

From the same architecture
Chroot to target: chroot /mnt /bin/sh -i

Debootstrap second stage
/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

= Mandatory setup =

Add root passwd
While in the chroot, run: passwd

Hostname
You do not wish to have your rootfs have the same hostname as your host machine, so it is wise to change this now, as this will surreptitiously influence things like your ssh keys.

Simply edit /etc/hostname, this can be done from both inside and outside of the chroot.

Fstab
This can be done from both inside and outside of the chroot.

Add tmpfs
none		/tmp	tmpfs	defaults,noatime,mode=1777	0	0

Add boot partition (if present)
/dev/mmcblk0p1	/boot	vfat	defaults	0	0

Adjust filesystemtype accordingly.

With systemd

 * From within the chroot: systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyS0.service


 * Outside of chroot: ln -s /lib/systemd/system/serial-getty@.service /mnt/etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/serial-getty@ttyS0.service

With upstart
Please follow this ubuntu howto, which can be done from outside the chroot.

With sysvinit
Add the following line to /etc/inittab, independent of chroot (apart from the path): T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100

= Optional/deferrable setup =

Most of these things can be done from within the chroot or on the actual machine. They are really nice to have, but not totally necessary before the first boot of the target machine.

If debians servers are not resolving, you might need to copy the hosts' resolv.conf to the target filesystem before chrooting back in.

Locales
Run: apt-get install locales dpkg-reconfigure locales

It might make sense to choose en_US.UTF-8

Expanded apts sources.list
Here are some expanded sourcUes.lists, which are bound to be out of date, to augment /apt/sources.list on the target rootfs.

Debian
Replace stretch with your chosen debian distribution name. deb http://http.debian.net/debian stretch main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian stretch main contrib non-free deb http://http.debian.net/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian stretch-updates main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free

Ubuntu
Replace cosmic with your chosen ubuntu version. deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic main universe deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic main universe deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic-security main universe deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic-security main universe deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic-updates main universe deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ cosmic-updates main universe

Openssh-server
Run: apt-get install openssh-server

= Cleanup =

From within the chroot, run apt-get clean to remove cached packages.

If you were using a qemu chroot, then you need to remove /mnt/usr/bin/qemu-arm-static.

If you needed the hosts' resolv.conf, then you need to remove /mnt/etc/resolv.conf

= Tarring up the result =

You spent some time setting this up, and you might not want to retrace the above steps every few days, so you might as well throw this into a 100ish MB tarball:

From the host, from within /mnt/, run: tar -cjpf /home/user/sunxi_rootfs.tar.bz2.

Be careful when you unpack that, as rootfses are pretty much the only time tarballs should be untarred in the local directory.