I successfully flashed my vivid-unit board with the Debian 12 image and it seems to work OK - thanks.
I then downloaded the sources and followed the build instructions. I did all of this in a Debian 13 `chroot` environment specifically created for this build. However, the step
sudo ./vuos pack vivid-unit
breaks with the following error:
==> Running hook: boards/vivid-unit/hooks/30-vividunit-apt Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Get:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease [2091 B] Reading package lists... E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information.
I can work around this installing `aptitude` first and run `aptitude update` instead of `apt update`. With this the build does succeed.
Alter flashing the resulting image though the touch screen doesn't work. The desktop shows up but no touch. Connecting via the console reveals the peripherals aren't working correcty. Other than `lo` there are no network devices and the boot process repeated errors are shown:
[FAILED] Failed to start vu-btattac…nitialize Broadcom Bluetooth UART. See 'systemctl status vu-btattach.service' for details.
vivid@vivid-unit:~$ systemctl status vu-btattach.service
● vu-btattach.service - Initialize Broadcom Bluetooth UART
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/vu-btattach.service; enabled; preset: >
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2026-05-13>
Process: 13242 ExecStartPre=/sbin/modprobe bluetooth (code=exited, status=1>
CPU: 13ms
vivid@vivid-unit:~$
Any idea what's going wrong and how to fix it?
Vivid Unit OS build system itself already uses chroot, and it expects a normal host environment. Building inside another chroot is unsupported and may not work properly.
It is not a good practise to install aptitude to workaround an issue without understanding it. You mentioned the build succeeded eventually, but it was not the case according to your test result.
We have tested to build the system in a newly installed VM running Debian 13, and it just works by following the build instructions. I would suggest to build it directly in the real Debian 13 machine, or in a VM running Debian 13.
I installed a KVM with Debian 13 and I end up with exactly the same error:
==> Running hook: boards/vivid-unit/hooks/30-vividunit-apt Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Get:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease [2091 B] Reading package lists... E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information. real 21m30.129s user 0m0.019s sys 0m0.106s markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os$
So the issue is not the chroot itself but something else. Any insight on what's wrong?
We found and fixed an issue in the APT repository metadata. The previous InRelease file accidentally contained a Release.tmp.* entry in its checksum list. That temporary file was created while the Release file was being generated and should not have been included in the repository metadata.
This kind of malformed Release/InRelease metadata may cause apt to reject a repository (although our testing didn't encounter this). I cannot say with 100% certainty that this was the only cause until you retest, but it is likely related to the error you saw.
The repository has now been regenerated and re-signed. Please retry the build from a clean tree, without replacing apt-get update with aptitude update.
Unfortunately it still breaks with the same error:
==> Running hook: boards/vivid-unit/hooks/30-vividunit-apt Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Get:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease [1880 B] Reading package lists... E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information. markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os$
The debian repository did change (used to be `[2091 B]` nos it's `[1880 B]`) although I don't know the significance of that.
I did a fresh `git clone` of the repository into a new directory before the build in the KVM.
After the build failed I ssh'ed into the KVM, re-mounted the rootfs auxiliary filesystems and ran `apt-get update` manually:
markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo mount --rbind /dev rootfs/dev/ markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo mount --make-rslave rootfs/dev/ markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo mount -t proc proc rootfs/proc/ markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo mount -t sysfs sysfs rootfs/sys markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo chroot rootfs/ root@vivid:/# apt-get update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Get:2 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease [1880 B] Get:3 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm/main arm64 Packages [1368 B] Hit:4 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:5 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Fetched 3248 B in 12s (268 B/s) Reading package lists... Done root@vivid:/#
Which came as a surprise to me - so I did the same from the console which I've been using for the builds:
markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os$ sudo chroot out/rootfs/vivid-unit/rootfs/ root@vivid:/# sudo apt-get update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Hit:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease Reading package lists... Done E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. root@vivid:/#
Note that this one failed _immediately after_ the same command succeeded in the ssh session, literally 30 seconds apart in the same KVM and the same `rootfs`
Interesting - I figured if it works through ssh I just run the entire build in an ssh session instead of the console. Unfortunately that didn't do the trick and it ran into the same issue. Manually mounting /dev /proc and /sys and calling `apt-get update` in the rootfs like before also failed.
That makes it unlikely that the repository metadata is the cause.
Now I notice this line:
E: Could not read from ... InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory)
The Vivid Unit InRelease file is only about 1.8 KB, so this does not look like a real repository-size problem. It looks more like apt, possibly running as arm64 under qemu-user-static, hitting an environment-specific memory allocation or resource-limit issue.
Maybe you can compare the following between the SSH session where apt-get update succeeds and the console session where it fails:
uname -m dpkg --print-architecture qemu-aarch64-static --version || true ulimit -a cat /proc/$$/limits free -h grep -E 'CommitLimit|Committed_AS|MemAvailable|SwapTotal|SwapFree' /proc/meminfo cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio
Also, please run apt-get directly inside the chroot, without sudo:
sudo chroot out/rootfs/vivid-unit/rootfs /bin/bash -lc ' apt-get clean rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* apt-get update '
Did another clean build for this experiment and could not reproduce the `console` vs. `ssh` success. I did get success by using `apt update` instead of `apt-get update`
markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ sudo chroot rootfs/ root@vivid:/# apt update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Get:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease [1880 B] Get:5 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm/main arm64 Packages [1368 B] Fetched 3248 B in 13s (251 B/s) Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done 4 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them. root@vivid:/# apt-get update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Hit:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease Reading package lists... Done E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. root@vivid:/# apt update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Hit:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done 4 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them. root@vivid:/# apt-get update Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease Hit:3 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease Hit:4 https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease Reading package lists... Done E: Could not read from /var/lib/apt/lists/vividunit.com_apt_dists_bookworm_InRelease - getline (12: Cannot allocate memory) E: The repository 'https://vividunit.com/apt bookworm InRelease' provides only weak security information. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details. root@vivid:/#
And this is the output from the commands you were looking for:
markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$ uname -m
dpkg --print-architecture
qemu-aarch64-static --version || true
ulimit -a
cat /proc/$$/limits
free -h
grep -E 'CommitLimit|Committed_AS|MemAvailable|SwapTotal|SwapFree' /proc/meminfo
cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_ratio
x86_64
amd64
qemu-aarch64 version 10.0.8 (Debian 1:10.0.8+ds-0+deb13u1+b2)
Copyright (c) 2003-2025 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers
real-time non-blocking time (microseconds, -R) unlimited
core file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority (-e) 0
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 31563
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) 8192
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 1024
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority (-r) 0
stack size (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 31563
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited
Limit Soft Limit Hard Limit Units
Max cpu time unlimited unlimited seconds
Max file size unlimited unlimited bytes
Max data size unlimited unlimited bytes
Max stack size 8388608 unlimited bytes
Max core file size 0 unlimited bytes
Max resident set unlimited unlimited bytes
Max processes 31563 31563 processes
Max open files 1024 524288 files
Max locked memory 8388608 8388608 bytes
Max address space unlimited unlimited bytes
Max file locks unlimited unlimited locks
Max pending signals 31563 31563 signals
Max msgqueue size 819200 819200 bytes
Max nice priority 0 0
Max realtime priority 0 0
Max realtime timeout unlimited unlimited us
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.8Gi 478Mi 5.4Gi 576Ki 2.1Gi 7.3Gi
Swap: 582Mi 12Ki 582Mi
MemAvailable: 7647068 kB
SwapTotal: 596988 kB
SwapFree: 596976 kB
CommitLimit: 4665732 kB
Committed_AS: 233132 kB
0
50
markus@vivid:~/projects/vivid-unit/vivid-unit-os/out/rootfs/vivid-unit$
@markus-lampert I think your RAM may be a little tight for this.
You may try
sudo sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1
and then see if that brings any difference.
sudo sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1
I tried that - unfortunately no impact, still fails. I also ran `apt-get update` after shutting down the VM and after booting it up again I only remounted the auxiliary filesystems in rootfs and the `apt-get update` still failed.
I also did a fresh build after replacing `apt-get update` with `apt update` in 30-vividunit-apt. The build succeeded and it produces a functional image.