Cannot install apps or login with ssh

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@danielcclay, please try the following approach and let me know the where exactly it fails:

  1. Create an SD card with the FreedomBox image for Olimex hardware: https://ftp.freedombox.org/pub/freedombox/pioneer/ Use these instructions for downloading and writing to SD card.
  2. Insert the SD card and restart FreedomBox device. Since, Pinoeer has a battery, need to press the reset button or disconnect and reconnect the battery. After that follow the instructions here to get to the web interface: https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/QuickStart
  3. Complete the first wizard and create an admin account.
  4. Leave the box for a couple days and let is upgrade to the latest version which is 21.0. Confirm this in the Help->About page.
  5. Setup a domain name for the box and use that to login to Cockpit application (with web-based terminal) to get a remote shell. Note that only URLs listed in the Cockpit app will work and IP address based URLs will not work. Only admin accounts work and not just any accounts. You can also try to login via SSH. Again only admin accounts work.

Notes on problems you faced:

  • Latest version FreedomBox will automatically run ‘dpkg --configure -a’ before trying to install package. So, you won’t have to run it on a terminal.
  • SSH will fail if you try to login without admin account.
  • SSH will lock you out for sometime if you have tried to login too many times with incorrect credentials.
  • Cockpit will only work with the URLs listed in the Cockpit app page and won’t work with IP address (due to security settings).
  • It is not possible to brick a Olimex FreedomBox hardware. You can always recover by writing a fresh SD card.
  • ‘dpkg --configure -a’ related problem typically happens when you restart the machine while package installation or upgrade is running.
  • Many problems have been fixed over a period of time, but Stable release only upgrades to latest FreedomBox version with fixes only after a couple of days. A new stable release is due this year that will ship with the latest FreedomBox by default.

Hope this helps. Following the above process, let me know where exactly it failed for you, I will be able to help better.

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