PI 3 and Raspbian Wheezy

[kenneth0241]

Anyone found a way to install the WiFi chipset on Wheezy? After I update the Wheezy, I still cannot have luck to connect to the Internet with using the onboard Wifi. I only can use the WiPi..

[DougieLawson]

Anyone found a way to install the WiFi chipset on Wheezy? After I update the Wheezy, I still cannot have luck to connect to the Internet with using the onboard Wifi. I only can use the WiPi..

Forget it. What stops you from going to Jessie?

[mathboy4life]

Anyone found a way to install the WiFi chipset on Wheezy? After I update the Wheezy, I still cannot have luck to connect to the Internet with using the onboard Wifi. I only can use the WiPi..

Follow this thread viewtopic.php?f=66&t=138714

[sgsax]

I have been successfully able to do this by extracting a jessie kernel and copying to the boot partition on a wheezy image. I need wheezy for another application I use on my Pis and am looking forward to the improved performance on the Pi 3.

Here are the general steps to get it done:

1. Download newest archive release of Raspbian Wheezy and unzip it: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbi ... wheezy.zip
2. Download latest release of Raspbian Jessie and unzip it: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
3. Install the wheezy image to your SD card following appropriate instructions here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... /README.md
4. Either install jessie image to another SD card, or alternatively if you are prepping your image on another Linux box, you can mount the boot partition within the image like so:
   1. create a mount point

      Code: Select all

      # mkdir /mnt/img
      

   2. look at the image to see where the boot partition starts

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      # fdisk -lu 2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img
      
      Disk 2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img: 4029 MB, 4029677568 bytes
      255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 489 cylinders, total 7870464 sectors
      Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
      Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
      I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
      Disk identifier: 0x0cf63fa8
      
                               Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
      2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img1            8192      131071       61440    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
      2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img2          131072     7870463     3869696   83  Linux
      

      That FAT32 partition is the boot partition. The other partition is the rest of the system files. Note these start sectors for the next step. Your image may be different, so your start sectors may be a different numbers.
   3. From the above results, the boot partition starts on sector 8192, and each sector is 512 bytes, so we will want to start on an offset of 8192*512. The system partition start on sector 131072, so we need an offset of 131072*512. Prepare loopback devices with these offsets within the image file:

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      # losetup /dev/loop0 2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img -o $((8192 * 512))
      # losetup /dev/loop1 2016-02-26-raspbian-jessie.img -o $((131072 * 512))
      

      Verify that this worked by using "file" to inspect the new loopback devices

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      # file -s /dev/loop0
      /dev/loop0: x86 boot sector
      # file -s /dev/loop1
      /dev/loop1: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=443559ba-b80f-4fb6-99d9-ddbcd6138fbd (extents) (large files)
      

   4. Now we can mount the loopback devices. Order is important here

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      # mount /dev/loop1 /mnt/img
      # mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/img/boot
      

      If you run "ls -la" on your mountpoint now, you should see a bunch of files listed.
5. Your SD card should already be mounted. Depending on your distro, you may have the two separate partitions mounted. Copy the necessary files as follows using your favorite method.
   1. You want to copy the contents of the files in "/mnt/img/boot" into the partition identified as "boot" on the SD card.
   2. Copy the contents of "/mnt/img/lib/modules" into the corresponding directory "lib/modules" on the system partition of the SD card.
   3. Copy the entire directory "/mnt/img/lib/modules-load.d" into the "lib" directory on the system partition of the SD card.
   4. Copy the file "aliases.conf" in the "/mnt/img/lib/modprobe.d" directory into the directory "lib/modprobe.d" on the system partition of the SD card. It is OK to overwrite the existing file that is in there.
6. Unmount/eject your SD card and you should be able to boot to it in your Pi 3 immediately. You can unmount /mnt/img if you like. The loopback device you created should be available until you delete it or reboot, should you need it again.

One more thing you need to watch out for here. Next time you run updates, apt is going to want to be nice and helpful and get you a new kernel. But you don't want a new kernel from wheezy, you want to keep your kernel from jessie that you just painstakingly acquired above. To do this, you need to prevent the appropriate package from updating. Debian calls this "pinning" a package. The package you want to prevent from updating is called raspberrypi-bootloader, and you pin it by creating a file in the directory "/etc/apt/preferences.d/". I called mine "raspberrypi-bootloader", just to make it easy to identify, but you can name the file anything you want. It should have contents like this:

Code: Select all

Package: raspberrypi-bootloader
Pin: version 1.20150421-1
Pin-Priority: 1000

This version is the one that is on the wheezy image. The Pin-Priority value here tells apt to never upgrade or downgrade the currently-installed package. This is what you want, to just leave the package alone. Luckily, if you ever do accidentally upgrade the package and clobber your working kernel, simply follow these steps again to restore the good kernel from the jessie image.

So far, this is looking pretty good for me. I don't care about wireless for this application, so have not bothered testing it. Everything else seems to be working fine for me. I have one nagging problem with NFS mounting, but haven't been able to determine if it's a problem with the mismatched kernel or not. If you don't need to mount NFS shares on your Pi, then you should have no problem. I just got this worked out today and will post further updates if any new surprises arise.

Cheers!

EDIT: Turns out my NFS problem was related to IPv6. I disabled it in /etc/netconfig and now it works fine.

[f00nth]

After attempting many alternatives with no success, I can confirm sgsax's method of copying the jessie boot partition on wheezy image DOES in fact work for booting Wheezy on RPI3.

Side note, I emailed Raspberry Pi asking if they will have official support for a wheezy image, I assumed they would eventually, to my surprise they replied with:

Thank you for your interest in Raspberry Pi.

No, we are only supporting Jessie going forward.

Regards

Nicola Early
Administrator
Raspberry Pi

Sad news. So officially the above method is the best (and possibly only) method of running wheezy on PI3. I've been running it for a couple weeks now (using it for the Jasper AI project) and no problems thus far.

[craigjohnstone]

I'll have to stick with the PI 2 because I have custom applications that only works for Raspbian Wheezy.

Colour me intrigued. What apps could you have that don't work on Jessie?

I'm struggling to get Gertbot to work on anything but wheezy at the moment.....

[asandford]

I'll have to stick with the PI 2 because I have custom applications that only works for Raspbian Wheezy.

Colour me intrigued. What apps could you have that don't work on Jessie?

I'm struggling to get Gertbot to work on anything but wheezy at the moment.....

There are many complex setups that jessie completely breaks.

Comments such as:

Forget it. What stops you from going to Jessie?

are unhelpful and unrealistic in the real world where breaking stuff costs money.

[DougieLawson]

Comments such as:

Forget it. What stops you from going to Jessie?

are unhelpful and unrealistic in the real world where breaking stuff costs money.

My post is not a banal comment, it's a question.

The intention is to discover what the real, underlying, currently undisclosed problem is. If we don't know the root cause of the OP's problems we can never solve it.

Posts that say "I must run Wheezy, I can't run Jessie" are the unhelpful ones.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

There are many complex setups that jessie completely breaks.

No, I'm not buying that... nope. Now then, there are many complex things that people have setup on wheezy that they are either to lazy to setup again on Jessie, or more likely, they simply have forgotten how, and they are afraid of losing their functionality by upgrading (I get that).

But, let's not have any of this flap-doodle, balderdash or poppycock about Jessie breaks stuff... cause it just ain't so.

marcus

[Cancelor]

There are many complex setups that jessie completely breaks.

No, I'm not buying that... nope. Now then, there are many complex things that people have setup on wheezy that they are either to lazy to setup again on Jessie, or more likely, they simply have forgotten how, and they are afraid of losing their functionality by upgrading (I get that).

But, let's not have any of this flap-doodle, balderdash or poppycock about Jessie breaks stuff... cause it just ain't so.

marcus

I agree, better to spend time and effort in getting something current to work than it is to spend time and effort trying to fix something old.

[signuplease]

I agree, better to spend time and effort in getting something current to work than it is to spend time and effort trying to fix something old.

With all due respect (and a smile ) from a first poster but decade long linux user reading anything related to the Pi3 issues, the above statement is debatable and doesn't really apply to the OP. The OP is not trying to fix something old (his setup on Wheezy works fine) but he is inquiring about whether something "old" will work on a new hardware.
The reason why I think it is a debatable statement (and it's off-topic somehow): very often, time has been spent to have something "current" to work well, with no need nor demand for something "more current". That is until something "more current" renders the "former current" old, or even broke a couple of finely tuned setups following an "upgrade". So, it happens that time should be spent again; and the cycle goes on. While some upgrades are necessary, the rate at which they are released is sometimes overwhelming; while many could live happily with the same HW, SW setup and "current" version. The case of the RPi is a bit special because upgrades are closely related to HW (as seem to be the present case for Wheezy and the absence of support for the ARMv8). I guess that nobody nor nothing is perfect, hence the constant need for "improvement".
This being said, this thread has some nice pieces of information.
Absolutely no offense meant at all to anyone! Cheers!

Ludovic

[asandford]

There are many complex setups that jessie completely breaks.

No, I'm not buying that... nope. Now then, there are many complex things that people have setup on wheezy that they are either to lazy to setup again on Jessie, or more likely, they simply have forgotten how, and they are afraid of losing their functionality by upgrading (I get that).

But, let's not have any of this flap-doodle, balderdash or poppycock about Jessie breaks stuff... cause it just ain't so.

marcus

I couldn't give a flying fig what you're buying. I'm neither lazy, stupid or have memory loss, but I've some softwware that simply won't work under jessie. The company that wrote it seems to have gone, and if you know of an open-source VTL that can emulate a TS3100 please let me know.

[jojopi]

If the software is both esoteric and proprietary, then it is surprising there was ever a binary build for Raspbian armhf.

If the build runs on wheezy, it certainly can be made to run on jessie. (But I will not claim that is necessarily easier than backporting the Foundation's hardware support to wheezy.)

What problems do you have running the thing on jessie? Is it just missing older versions of shared libraries?

[asandford]

If the software is both esoteric and proprietary, then it is surprising there was ever a binary build for Raspbian armhf.

If the build runs on wheezy, it certainly can be made to run on jessie. (But I will not claim that is necessarily easier than backporting the Foundation's hardware support to wheezy.)

What problems do you have running the thing on jessie? Is it just missing older versions of shared libraries?

If you're response is to my post, then the software is open-source. The platfrom is x86-64 (it uses iscsi which is still not in the kernel - how many times do we need to ask to get this standard feature added?), but it holds true that some software can't be run on jessie.

[cacti]

There are many complex setups that jessie completely breaks.

No, I'm not buying that... nope. Now then, there are many complex things that people have setup on wheezy that they are either to lazy to setup again on Jessie, or more likely, they simply have forgotten how, and they are afraid of losing their functionality by upgrading (I get that).

But, let's not have any of this flap-doodle, balderdash or poppycock about Jessie breaks stuff... cause it just ain't so.

marcus

For the most part I agree with you, but unfortunately it is not always that simple. For example I use a rapid development tool that generates PHP code along with my code. Deploying the code on Jessie gives parse errors in the Apache log files while the exact same installation (except for PHP and Apache versions) works in Wheezy. Now I agree I could work through each line of 3rd party code (since their code syntax is clearly not correct) and fix it. Then every time I redeploy the applications I will have to work through the code again. This is clearly not feasible. Now a solution would be to stop using this particular tool, but I have invested too much time into it. I could downgrade PHP, but that is (according to me) not the way to go. I would rather use Wheezy on the Pi3 until the company that develops the rapid development tool gets their ducks in a row.

[cacti]

I created a Wheezy image for the RPi3. It's a "lite" version (i.e. no GUI). Currently I did not include the Jessie kernel (which means the on-board wireless will not work), I'll do it this weekend. I'll gladly share if someone can sponsor an upload/download site. The image is 475MB in size.

[kise]

I would love the wheezy image, i need it for a stand alone solution, where the pie just act as a Bluetooth A2PD.
The image i am using works perfect on hte pie 1, but will not boot on either the pie 2 or the pie 3,
not sure why..
And i am not that fuzzed about finding out why, i just need to make a new image, that works, and after fighting with the bluez-5 on the newest raspbian, i do not think i am going to get there..

So if you have a image, and would like to share it, it would be wonderful, (I do not have a server unfortunantly, but maybe we could use torrent?)

[cacti]

Hi kise

I can share the image, I did however not bother to get the Bluetooth running since I don't use it. I’m sure it could be done though. Let me know if you still want the image.

Is the Pi the A2PD source or receiver? If the Pi is the source for example to connect to Bluetooth speakers it’s very easy to do in Jessie. Send me a private message if you need more info since its off topic in this thread.

[asandford]

I would love the wheezy image, i need it for a stand alone solution, where the pie just act as a Bluetooth A2PD.
The image i am using works perfect on hte pie 1, but will not boot on either the pie 2 or the pie 3,
not sure why..
And i am not that fuzzed about finding out why, i just need to make a new image, that works, and after fighting with the bluez-5 on the newest raspbian, i do not think i am going to get there..

So if you have a image, and would like to share it, it would be wonderful, (I do not have a server unfortunantly, but maybe we could use torrent?)

All previous images are here. Wheezey won't work on the pi3 without hacking, but runs happily on a pi2b

[owaizshareef]

Anyone found a way to install the WiFi chipset on Wheezy? After I update the Wheezy, I still cannot have luck to connect to the Internet with using the onboard Wifi. I only can use the WiPi..

Forget it. What stops you from going to Jessie?

sir, i am doing parallel computing using four raspberry pi.
i dont have sufficent tutorials to guide me with jessey

[SonOfAMotherlessGoat]

sir, i am doing parallel computing using four raspberry pi.
i dont have sufficent tutorials to guide me with jessey

Hijacking random threads that have nothing to do with your issues is not step #1 to solving your problems. Start a new thread, list your operating environment, the specific issue you are having and anything you have tried along with the error messages you have received.

Thanks.

[fruitoftheloom]

Anyone found a way to install the WiFi chipset on Wheezy? After I update the Wheezy, I still cannot have luck to connect to the Internet with using the onboard Wifi. I only can use the WiPi..

Forget it. What stops you from going to Jessie?

sir, i am doing parallel computing using four raspberry pi.
i dont have sufficent tutorials to guide me with jessey

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=149104&p=980551#p980551

[fruitoftheloom]

sir, i am doing parallel computing using four raspberry pi.
i dont have sufficent tutorials to guide me with jessey

Hijacking random threads that have nothing to do with your issues is not step #1 to solving your problems. Start a new thread, list your operating environment, the specific issue you are having and anything you have tried along with the error messages you have received.

Thanks.

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=149104&p=980551#p980551

[gminns]

I can't get MySQL to work on Pi3 and getting XRDP for Remote Desktop was a pain too. Looking forward to a version of Raspian on Pi3 that supports these Apps much better. So I have to keep using Pi2 until these deficiencies are fixed.