Pi Operating Systems

Choose the right foundation for the type of system you deploy.

The Raspberry Pi Imager helps you choose and flash your media:

sudo apt install rpi-imager
rpi-imager

https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

Backing up

Before you re-use an SD card for a new device, be sure to back them up. Make an image.

This looks like a good guide that includes resizing the partition:

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/back-up-raspberry-pi-as-disk-image

sudo apt-get install gparted -y

Go ahead and get QDirStat to help determine space utilization

sudo apt-get install qdirstat

Plug in card via card reader. Identify the device path

lsblk

On linux, dd is a good option to copy raw data that's usually available.

sudo fdisk -l
sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sde of=~/MyImage.img

If you shrank the partition to enable only dd'ing the used space, specify the size to dd. In this case, I had 9GB of data on the card:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=~/2024-pi-64bit-os-plex-calibre-web-sd.img bs=1M count=9000

Shrinking

Install a shrink script

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Drewsif/PiShrink/master/pishrink.sh
sudo chmod +x pishrink.sh
sudo mv pishrink.sh /usr/local/bin

Then

sudo pishrink.sh -z myimg.img

Note: if you get an error like the following, ensure that you copied enough data in the previous dd command:

sudo pishrink.sh -z 2021-plex-pi-32bit-os-server-sd.img 
pishrink.sh v0.1.4
pishrink.sh: Gathering data ...
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!
pishrink.sh: ERROR occurred in line 288: parted failed with rc 1

Verify in VM

Try running an image as a virtual machine. Alternatively, mount it as a file system and extract necessary information from the device.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-run-the-raspberry-pi-os-in-a-virtual-machine-with-qemu-and-kvm

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qemu-system-arm qemu-kvm libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system bridge-utils virtinst libvirt-daemon virt-manager

Get qemu-ready kernels

git clone https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel

Ensure default network is started

sudo virsh --connect=qemu:///system net-start default

Launch the image

sudo virt-install \
  --name rpios  \
  --arch armv6l \
  --machine versatilepb \
  --cpu arm1176 \
  --vcpus 1 \
  --memory 256 \
  --import  \
  --osinfo debian12 \
  --disk 2024-pi-64bit-os-plex-calibre-web-sd.img,format=raw,bus=virtio \
  --network bridge,source=virbr0,model=virtio  \
  --video vga  \
  --graphics spice \
  --boot 'dtb=qemu-rpi-kernel/versatile-pb-buster.dtb,kernel=qemu-rpi-kernel/kernel-qemu-4.19.50-buster,kernel_args=root=/dev/vda2 panic=1' \
  --events on_reboot=destroy

use virt-manager to control which VMs are running (or restart stalled ones)

It can be tricky to determine which qemu-rpi-kernel to use. For example, debian12 / bookworm kernels are not currently available (as of 2024.01.20)

https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel/issues/155

Images

rpi-imager works with compressed .gz images. No need to decompress manually (unless you want to try running the image in a VM?).

Ideally you'd try recreating the image in reverse to make sure everything works as expected. And use a different SD card.

If you don't have one available for testing, try mounting the image and browsing the filesystem. [Ubuntu allows double-clicking the .img file to mount read-only?]

https://raspberrytips.com/create-image-sd-card/
How to Create an Image of a Raspberry Pi SD Card? (Win/Linux/Mac) – RaspberryTips
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=linux+mount+dd+image+&ia=web
linux mount dd image at DuckDuckGo
https://askubuntu.com/questions/445979/how-to-mount-sd-card-image-created-with-dd
How to mount sd-card image created with dd? - Ask Ubuntu

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=create+an+image+of+an+sd+card&ia=web
create an image of an sd card at DuckDuckGo

dd

Run df -h to see what devices are currently mounted. Connect Card. Run df -h again. (dmesg and mount are also useful commands to hone in on the correct device)

umount /dev/sdi1

sudo dd bs=4M if=/c/out-data/2015-05-05-raspbian-wheezy.img of=/dev/sdi

Via this guide for using dd to create images: Installing Operating System Images - Raspberry Pi Documentation https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md

Install SD to Pi

After the flash is complete, insert the SD card into the Pi and connect all the peripherals. Power on the Pi.

Flash the image alternatives

Alternative ways to flash the image if the above rpi-imager does not suit your needs

Balena Etcher

Download and run Etcher:

https://etcher.io/

This has been adopted by Rasperry Pi and rebranded and expanded. At least the overall process feels the same.

Some good interesting projects shown during write phase.

https://www.balena.io/etcher/
balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives

Pi Operating Systems ​

Backing up ​

Shrinking ​

Verify in VM ​

Images ​

dd ​

Install SD to Pi ​

See also ​

Flash the image alternatives ​

Balena Etcher ​