Ubuntu Wiki

Copying Ubuntu onto the SD-card

Download the Ubuntu preinstalled server image and flash it on your sdcard using:

xzcat jammy-preinstalled-server-riscv64+nezha.img.xz | sudo dd bs=1M conv=fsync of=/dev/sdX

You will have to replace /dev/sdX by the actual device name of your SD card. Please, be especially cautious not to overwrite the wrong drive as this cannot be undone.

First boot

Insert the SD card and power on the board.

Don't be impatient when not seeing any HDMI output from the kernel for a few minutes. This is due to the board performance. Early boot output is only available on the serial console which runs at 115200 baud.

For accessing the serial console you can use picocom:

picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0

When booting the first time wait until you see an output line confirming that cloud-init has finished. Cloud init is responsible for generating the SSH keys and setting the default password. Cloud init itself will also need a few minutes. The line to wait for will look similar to

 [  291.932176] cloud-init[1282]: Cloud-init v. 22.3.4-0ubuntu1 finished at Thu, 20 Oct 2022 08:25:11 +0000. Datasource DataSourceNoCloud [seed=/var/lib/cloud/seed/nocloud-net][dsmode=net].  Up 291.79 seconds

Now you can login with user ubuntu and the default password ubuntu and will be asked to choose a new password.

Known issues

• Wifi/BT not working: the WiFi driver is only available on the vendor kernel

• Ethernet MAC address changes at every boot: this “feature” is described here along with the solutions to fix this in section “Setting the MAC address”

• Shutdown fails