Problem Description
After many months of attempting to flash my own Freedombox build on a Raspberry Pi 4B without any success and without any helpful support, I finally caved and just bought a pre-built Freedombox from the website (Olimex). The initial boot gave me a lot of trouble with broken captchas and locked my Admin account. After trying different browsers, different computers, and setting a static IP, I eventually got logged into the web interface.
HOWEVER, I am unable to install ANY applications. Every single time, I receive this error:
“Error installing application: Error during installation E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run ‘sudo dpkg --configure -a’ to correct the problem.”
Using the command line in Windows and the Terminal on MacOS, I attempted to login via ssh and always receive this error: “Permission denied, please try again.”
This denial occurs whether I use the user@hostname.local or user@ipaddress format, and no matter which user I try. I tried creating a new admin user, disabling all privacy/security restrictions, changing the password, rebooting everything, etc., just to be sure.
So, in summary, I can login via the web interface but it doesn’t do me much good because I cannot install any apps and I cannot login via ssh to fix it. That means I am now the proud owner of not one, BUT TWO $100 bricks that were supposed to be Freedomboxes.
Y’all, believe me, I am THE target audience for Freedombox - a privacy-oriented creative type with a low budget and very limited technical skills trying to serve my community. I believe in this project and I REALLY want it to work. But if it takes a computer science degree to even get to a functioning GUI, I can assure you this will never be widely adopted.
Thanks in advance for any guidance.
Expected Results
To be able to install apps on the Freedombox.
The be able to login to the Freedombox via ssh.
Information
- FreedomBox version 19.2
- Hardware: (Olimex)
- How did you install FreedomBox?: bought pre-installed hardware