UART or serial console

Development
1

Hi,

If the boot process gets stuck and you get no network connection, your last resort is UART (serial console). You can interrupt the boot process to land in uBoot, which is not very comfortable.
If you are lucky it runs through until:

access using a web browser - there is no webbrowser access.

FreedomBox

To start using FreedomBox and to create an account, access using a web browser
one of the following URLs.

http://freedombox.local/
http://10.42.0.1/
http://[fe80::8867:ade:8fed:4a21]/

Only administrators can login unless otherwise configured in Security section.
FreedomBox also provides a web console for system administration using Cockpit.
Web console: https://freedombox:9090/

freedombox login:

By the way, is x:9090/ still correct?

I searched through the manual and in the forum about UART or serial console. I had no luck.
As I have no webinterface to create an Admin - account, how can I access the system?
How can I initiate to create an account from here?

1 Like
2

@Tido , it is indeed correct that if network does not work, that last resort is to connect UART/serial cable.

There is no default username/password on FreedomBox for security reasons. Accounts are usually created during first wizard using web interface. To login after boot via the serial console, you need to setup an account before hand. If the machine is using a microSD card, you can plug that into a laptop mount the partition and set the password inside chroot. This can be done on the user account “root”. After this you can login on the serial console using this account. Alternatively, before writing the downloaded image onto the SD card, you can set the password on it using the ‘passwd-in-image’ tool in the freedom-maker package. This script requires a Debian or other GNU/Linux system, however.

The address https://freedombox:9090/ is only valid for Cockpit system administration web interface. Without a valid user account you won’t be able to login there. Don’t use this URL.

I notice http://10.42.0.1/ in the list of URLs. We see this when FreedomBox configures network interface with a DHCP server. This happens when you have more than one network interface, such as when you have a wireless adapter (example Raspberry Pi 4). If you have a wireless adapter, connect to that using the newly created access point “FreedomBoxwlan0”. Otherwise, if the second network interface is an Ethernet, connect a computer to it and wait for the computer to be assigned an IP address. In both cases access https://10.42.0.1/ from browser and finish the FreedomBox first wizard to create the accounts.

Alternatively, ignore the second network adapter and connect the first network adapter to the your local network. Check the IP address in the router and access that IP address using a browser running on a machine connected to the same router as described in the manual.

2 Likes
3

Thank you for your reply.

My PC is AMD x86, the image is of an A20 SBC = ARM. Do I need special software to chroot this SDcard?

Would it be easier to run for example a Raspberry Pi, plug an USB-SDcard-Reader with the SDcard of the A20 into the RPi. Now access via SSH from my AMD x86 the RPi, and chroot from within the RPi the SDcard?

Sounds a bit complicated, but actually it is not. What do you think?

4

You can use QEMU-user mode emulators to chroot into another architecture, although it does not seem simple. The discussion in this thread is pretty interesting: qemu - How can I chroot into a filesystem with a different architechture? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

Although this sounds complicated, I do think this seems like it would be easier than that QEMU madness. Give it a shot!

1 Like