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First boot ​

The first power-up is the longest one. The Pi has to:

  1. Complete second-stage debootstrap (postinst scripts run on the actual hardware now)
  2. Apply minimal config (hostname, fstab, apt sources, dpkg no-doc/no-locale rules)
  3. Bring up wifi STA on IoT for internet
  4. apt update + install runit-init — this is the moment systemd-sysv gets dropped and runit takes PID 1
  5. Install the tool stack + bluez + nexmon build deps
  6. Create the nt:nt user, NOPASSWD sudo, autologin getty on tty1
  7. Build nexmon for BCM43436 (~15 min)
  8. Patched firmware lands in /lib/firmware/brcm/
  9. Configure runit services (sshd, wpa_supplicant, dhclient, hostapd for nosferato-mgmt, dnsmasq for AP+tether)
  10. Set up USB OTG g_multi composite gadget
  11. Strip locales, docs (~80MB recovered)
  12. Self-disable + reboot

Total: 30–45 min depending on apt mirror speed.

Watching it happen ​

Two ways:

  • Serial console — UART on GPIO 14/15 at 115200 baud. Anything with a USB-TTL adapter (e.g. a CP2102) will show every step.
  • Tail the log after the fact — once the rig is reachable, cat /var/log/nosferato-firstboot.log.

When something fails ​

The only step likely to bite is the nexmon build (it pulls ~200MB of build deps + cross-compiles a kernel module). If it does:

sh
ssh nt@10.10.10.1
cd ~/nexmon
source setup_env.sh
cd patches/bcm43436b0/9_88_4_65/nexmon
make
sudo cp brcmfmac43436-sdio.bin /lib/firmware/brcm/
sudo reboot

Everything else is idempotent — re-trigger by re-creating /boot/nosferato-firstboot and rebooting. (You probably don't want to though — it'll re-clone nexmon.)