Installing Lubuntu 1.02 on Cubieboard 3

I just got new hardware to play around with – a Cubietruck / Cubieboard 3 that I will use as an application server in the near future.

First of all we will set up a Linux system called Lubuntu Server on the Cubieboard 3. After that we are going to install additional software, like Apache Tomcat. In this article all necessary steps for installing Lubuntu to your Cubieboard 3 are presented. This tutorial assumes, you are working under a Windows Operating System.

First you need to download the newest version of Lubuntu.
You might also check at http://dl.cubieboard.org/software/a20-cubietruck/lubuntu/ if a newer version is available. The general procedure of installation will remain the same, even when using a newer version.

Available Lubuntu images
Extract the downloaded image. You can do so by utilizing 7Zip or any other compress tool capable of handling .gz files.
Download and install PhoenixSuit (under Linux this is called „Livesuit“) to your Windows PC.

The installation of PhoenixSuit

The installation of PhoenixSuit II

If it is not available for download via the presented link, you might have a look to the Cubieboard documentation.

Plug in a network cable to avoid later waiting for the DHCP timeout when rebooting the system after the flashing operation was successful.

Plug in the mini usb cable, which should be already connected to you Windows PC.

Cubietruck USB Connector

Hold the FEL button down, until you see a changing prompt in Phonixsuit.

Cubietruck – FEL Button

PhoenixSuit – Flashing Rom I

In the next step you have to choose the image file of your Lubuntu download that you just saved to your PC.

PhoenixSuit – Flashing Rom II

Choose the Lubuntu Image

Choose „Yes“ to enter the format and upgrade mode. You will loose your currently installed system in this step.

PhoenixSuit – Format?

Wait for some time (it took about 5 minutes in my case) for completion of this task. The system will reboot and pre-configure your Cubitruck after the flash operation was successful.

PhonixSuit – Flashing your sd card

PhonixSuit – Flashing succeeded

To check if everything went well during flashing the NAND, try to connect via Putty to the server. The default hostname of your board is „cubietruck“ and you should get an IP adress from your DHCP server. Otherwise the cubetruck is morsing it´s current IP address for you, as you can see in the following video: