Install Armbian Ubuntu Desktop onto Banana Pi Pro

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It's been quite a while before I write down this similar blog as my previous Single Board Computer blogs. Banana Pi Pro is a SBC with AllWinner A20 ARM CPU, which is also just of card size (Cited from LeMaker Official website).

Orange Pi Plus 2

Now, we follow our previous blog Install Armbian Debian Server onto NanoPi NEO to install Armbian Ubuntu Desktop onto Banana Pi Pro.

PART A: Install Ubuntu Desktop Built By Armbian onto Banana Pi Pro

1. Download Armbian Ubuntu Desktop for Banana Pi Pro

We FIRST go visiting the website https://www.armbian.com/banana-pi-pro/ and click Armbian Bionic icon, a file named Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65.7z will be automatically downloaded.

Then, we extract this .7z file by

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$ 7z x Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65.7z -oArmbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65

7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=en_CA.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,8 CPUs Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (506E3),ASM,AES-NI)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 202610698 bytes (194 MiB)

Extracting archive: Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65.7z
--
Path = Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65.7z
Type = 7z
Physical Size = 202610698
Headers Size = 290
Method = LZMA2:25
Solid = +
Blocks = 1

Everything is Ok                                              

Files: 4
Size:       885017676
Compressed: 202610698

2. Install Armbian Ubuntu Desktop for Banana Pi Pro

After the extracted image file is prepared, it's the time to install the Armbian Ubuntu Desktop onto our TF card. We FIRST format the TF card:

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$ sudo umount /dev/mmcblk0p1 
[sudo] password for jiapei: 
$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0 
mke2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Found a dos partition table in /dev/mmcblk0
Proceed anyway? (y,N) y
Discarding device blocks: done                            
Creating filesystem with 7791744 4k blocks and 1949696 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 4e7bb315-0db1-4b62-a9d5-40c0ba78c7f0
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
        4096000

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Afterwards, use dd to install the downloaded Armbian Ubuntu Desktop image.

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$ cd Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65/
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=Armbian_5.59_Bananapipro_Ubuntu_bionic_next_4.14.65.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 conv=fsync
211+0 records in
211+0 records out
884998144 bytes (885 MB, 844 MiB) copied, 123.525 s, 7.2 MB/s

PART B: Boot Into Armbian, Network Configuration, Locale Configuration and Armbian Upgrading

NOTE: Whenever you met some unsolvable issue after you boot into Armbian, please use the command armbianmonitor -U to log the issue.

1. Boot Into Armbian

We now unplug the TF card from the host and put it into the Banana Pi Pro board, Armbian Ubuntu Desktop boots successfully. The default username and password are respectively: root and 1234.

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Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS bananapipro tty1

bananapipro login: root
password:
You are required to change your password immediately (root enforced)
Changing password for root.
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
...

And, for the FIRST boot, we'll be asked to create a NEW user besides root:

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Creating a new user account. Press <Ctrl-C> to abort

Please provide a username (eg. your forename): bananapipro
Trying to add user bananapipro
Adding user 'bananapipro' ...
Adding new group 'bananapipro' (1000) ...
Adding new user 'bananapipro' (1000) with group 'bananapipro' ...
Creating home directory '/home/bananapipro' ...
Copying files from '/etc/ske1' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for orangepiplus2
Eter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
       Full Name []:
       Room Number []:
       Work Phone []:
       Home Phone []:
       Other []:
Is the information correct? [Y/n] Y

Dear bananapipro, your account bananapipro has been created and is sudo enabled.
Please use this account for your daily work from now on.
...

Then, Banana Pi Pro now boots into text mode with account root. 

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root@bananapipro:~$

We may now re-login with the newly created account bananapipro: 

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$

2. Network Configuration

1). How to connect to wireless?

Please refer to Armbian docs - How to connect to wireless?, 

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ nmtui-connect SSID

and then input the corresponding password. Now, you should be able to connect to the Internet with a DHCP IP address.

2). How to set fixed IP?

Please refer to Armbian docs - How to set fixed IP?, and modify the file /etc/network/interfaces as follows:

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*
# Network is managed by Network manager
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# Wifi
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
    address 192.168.0.82
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.0.0
    broadcast 192.168.0.1
    gateway 192.168.0.1
    dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1 8.8.8.8
    wpa-ssid XXXXXXXX
    wpa-psk YYYYYYYY

Afterwards, a reboot (meanwhile, you may have to set up your own router for a fixed IP) will bring your Banana Pi Pro a fixed IP address. Here in my case: 192.168.0.82.

3. SSH Into Banana Pi Pro

We can now access Banana Pi Pro via ssh as follows: 

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$ ssh bananapipro@192.168.0.82
The authenticity of host '192.168.0.82 (192.168.0.82)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:SKJ/eU/a7Rm6T43jzwvNpQfG1w2FqDPg+eieM+sGynA.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.0.82' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
bananapipro@192.168.0.82's password: 
 ____                                  ____  _   ____            
| __ )  __ _ _ __   __ _ _ __   __ _  |  _ \(_) |  _ \ _ __ ___  
|  _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | | |_) | | | |_) | '__/ _ \ 
| |_) | (_| | | | | (_| | | | | (_| | |  __/| | |  __/| | | (_) |
|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_| |_|   |_| |_|   |_|  \___/ 
                                                                 

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.59 stable Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS 4.14.65-sunxi   
System load:   0.43 0.32 0.22   Up time:       15 min
Memory usage:  6 % of 992MB     IP:            192.168.0.82
CPU temp:      46°C           
Usage of /:    3% of 29G    

Last login: Tue Sep  4 21:43:26 2018

And, let's have a look at current IP of Banana Pi Pro.

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ ip -c address
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:0
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 02:86:02:42:2f:4e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 98:3b:16:e9:79:43 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.82/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlan0
       valid_lft 3069218372sec preferred_lft 3069218372sec
    inet6 fe80::40a5:2ad5:cfa4:a2d8/64 scope link noprefixroute
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

4. Locale Configuration

Clearly, from the above login info, our timezone seems to be wrong. Command dpkg-reconfigure tzdata is able to reset our timezone. 

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
[sudo] password for bananapipro: 
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en_US.UTF-8",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LC_MEASUREMENT = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_PAPER = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_MONETARY = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_NAME = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_ADDRESS = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_NUMERIC = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_MESSAGES = "en_US.UTF-8",
        LC_TELEPHONE = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_IDENTIFICATION = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LC_TIME = "en_CA.UTF-8",
        LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("en_US.UTF-8").
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

Current default time zone: 'America/Vancouver'
Local time is now:      Tue Sep  4 15:33:36 PDT 2018.
Universal Time is now:  Tue Sep  4 22:33:36 UTC 2018.

During the above process, you'll set the following 2 pages correspondingly:

System Locale America
System Locale Vancouver

If we logout and login Banana Pi Pro again, we'll see the timezone has been successfully reset. 

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$ exit
logout
Connection to 192.168.0.82 closed.
$ ssh bananapipro@192.168.0.82
bananapipro@192.168.0.82's password: 
 ____                                  ____  _   ____            
| __ )  __ _ _ __   __ _ _ __   __ _  |  _ \(_) |  _ \ _ __ ___  
|  _ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | | |_) | | | |_) | '__/ _ \ 
| |_) | (_| | | | | (_| | | | | (_| | |  __/| | |  __/| | | (_) |
|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|\__,_| |_|   |_| |_|   |_|  \___/ 
                                                                 

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.59 stable Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS 4.14.65-sunxi   
System load:   0.16 0.20 0.18   Up time:       53 min
Memory usage:  6 % of 992MB     IP:            192.168.0.82
CPU temp:      46°C           
Usage of /:    3% of 29G    

Last login: Tue Sep  4 14:58:03 2018 from 192.168.0.60

5. Armbian Upgrading

Always these 3 commands: 

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ sudo apt update
bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ apt list --upgradable
bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ sudo apt upgrade

6. Kernel Doublechecking

Finally, we have the system and kernel doublechecked. 

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bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ uname -r
4.14.65-sunxi
bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ uname -a
Linux bananapipro 4.14.65-sunxi #68 SMP Tue Aug 21 19:57:06 CEST 2018 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
bananapipro@bananapipro:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

Appendix

We can of course follow our previous blog Install Armbian Ubuntu Desktop with the Newest Supported Mainline Linux Kernel onto Orange Pi Plus 2 to upgrade the NEWEST U-Boot and Linux Kernel for Banana Pi Pro, which is NOT going to be discussed here again.