Recently I covered how to upgrade U-boot in your Sheevaplug SBC, now it’s time to install the latest version of Debian!

The following guide assumes that: a) you’ll be using a USB flash drive as the installation media and b) you’ll be installing Debian into an SD Card.

To begin, grab an empty USB flash drive and reformat it as FAT32, then download the Debian installer images from here:

http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/sheevaplug/uImage
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stretch/main/installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/sheevaplug/uInitrd

Now, you’ll need to connect to your Sheevaplug’s serial port once again. You can follow the instructions here on how to do it. After saving the files above to your USB flash drive plug it to Sheevaplug alongside with your SD card and reboot it; stop the boot process, as described before, and type:

usb start
fatload usb 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage
fatload usb 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd
setenv bootargs console=ttyS0,115200n8 base-installer/initramfs-tools/driver-policy=most
bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000

Now install Debian as you would on any computer. Once the installation is complete you need to reboot, stop the boot process again and make some adjustments to U-boot:

setenv bootargs_console console=ttyS0,115200
setenv bootcmd_mmc 'ext2load mmc 0:1 0x00800000 /uImage; ext2load mmc 0:1 0x01100000 /uInitrd'
setenv bootcmd 'setenv bootargs ${bootargs_console}; run bootcmd_mmc; bootm 0x00800000 0x01100000'
saveenv
run bootcmd

Now your Sheevaplug will boot up the latest version of Debian flawlessly!