NEW: kernel build script by clang is available at https://gist.github.com/emojifreak/180b335cd58edd9a64fc42b85f735c6d

Built images are available at http://114.150.218.139:63873/RPi-boot-images/ built by auto-image-builder.sh (images refreshed on 16 August 2021 after Debian 11 Bullseye release). Now these images support USB booting if you have updated the RPi firmware as https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md .

Warning: You need a recent version of qemu-user-static package. Otherwise the scripts here will probably fail.

debian-rpi-image-script

Shell script to build Debian SD card image booting the Raspberry Pi series. Official Debian SD card images are available at https://raspi.debian.net/ Features provided by this shell script are

• GPT partitioning and boot from USB.
• Choice of Debian 10 Buster, 11 Bullseye and later.
• Choice among ifupdown, Network Manager and systemd-networkd for network configuration
• Choice of package coverage according to the package priority
• btrfs and ext4 filesystems can be chosen as /. btrfs compress-force=lzo significantly increases the storage speed and size.
• Setting the size of a swap partition (or lack of it)
• Choice of timezone and locale
• Choice of wireless SSID
• Choice of keyboard layout

If you find any trouble, please report it as a github issue here. Other build shell scripts are listed below.

raspberripyOS-rpi-sd-builder

Use the kernel from Raspberry Pi OS. Except that, it is the same as above. Use of Gnome Wayland requires module_blacklist=v3d. This is a bug in gnome-shell.

devuan-rpi-image-script

SD card image builder is also available here for Devuan 3 Beowulf, 4 Chimaera and later. Devuan official images are available at https://arm-files.devuan.org/ , which does not have an image for RPi4, but the above script can produce an image booting RPi4 (incl. 8GB model). The two shell scripts are similar except packages given as an argument to mmdebstrap, namely, systemd-sysv,udev,debian-archive-keyring versus sysvinit-core,eudev,devuan-keyring,sntp. Hardware clock can be corrected by sntp -S pool.ntp.org as root.

Additional packages

• Graphical User Interface can be installed by tasksel or apt-get install task-xfce-desktop.
• language supports can be installed, for example, by apt-get install task-japanese task-japanese-desktop.

Running 32-bit kernel on RPi 3 or 4

32-bit kernel on 64-bit ARM CPU is unsupported by Debian kernel team, unlike the Raspberry Pi OS. build-raspi-kernel.sh can build a 32-bit kernel runnable on RPi 3 and 4. Compilation must be done in a Debian 11 Bullseye armhf (container or VM or a real hardware). The missing config item in the Debian kernel is CONFIG_PCIE_BRCMSTB=m, which is turned on only for arm64. 32-bit kernel usable on RPi 3 and 4 are available from http://114.150.218.139:63873/32bit-kernels-for-64bit-raspberrypi/

Comments on Linux 5.10 and Rapsberry Pi 4 (as of April 2021)

• I re-compiled linux-image-rt-arm64 Debian kernel 5.10.28 by build-debian-raspi-kernel.sh here, and made an IPv4 over IPv6 (MAP-E) router by Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB. It can handle packets at 700 Mbits/sec and has no problem in its packet processing capability. For such a use, it is important to fix the CPU frequency to its highest value and choose the performance governer by linux-cpupower. schedutil governer (the default) is enough.
• task-xfce-desktop, task-gnome-desktop and weston can be used with no problem (incl. YouTube on Firefox) on RPi4 Bullseye with the below workarounds.
• Both vc4.ko and snd_bcm2835.ko accesses to HDMI audio outputs. One should be module_blacklisted. Otherwise, pulseaudio does not work well.
• drivers/gpu/drm/vc4.ko enables 4K resolution and DRI/DRM. 4K resolution can be enabled without vc4.ko on RPi4 if hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 is included in config.txt.
• But vc4.ko sometimes garbles display output. disable_fw_kms_setup=1 in config.txt often supress this symptom. If disable_fw_kms_setup=1 does not help, patched kernel package is available at http://153.240.174.134:64193/kernel-deb-5.9/ The patch was included at Linux 5.10.13.
• gdm3 display manager and gnome session fail with vc4.ko because of insufficient CMA. Adding cma=192M@256M to cmdline.txt fixes this symptom.
• Boot from USB is impossible unlike Linux 5.9. Kernel package capable of USB boot is available at http://153.240.174.134:64193/kernel-deb-5.9/
• WiFi at 5GHz is sometimes blocked by the vc4.ko and high resolution display. module_blacklist=vc4 in cmdline.txt and hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 could enable both 5GHz WiFi and high resulution simultaneously.
• The above problem is caused by the wrong firmware /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin and /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.clm_blob. To fix this, replace those files by https://github.com/RPi-Distro/firmware-nonfree/tree/master/brcm . brcm-firmware.sh here replaces the firmware by those in Raspberry Pi OS.
• 5GHz WiFi on RPi4 becomes unusable with firmware-brcm80211 versions newer than 20210201. Replacing the above files also fixes this problem.
• Kernel package in the above URL is built by build-raspi4-kernel.sh in this directory.
• When kernel is booted from USB, udisks2 consumes lots of CPU power. It can be prevented by systemctl mask udisks2.

32-bit executables on 64-bit linux-image-arm64 kernel

linux-image-arm64 64-bit kernel can run armhf 32-bit executables. If armhf,arm64 is given to the above scripts as the target architecture in place of armhf or arm64, then an SD card with 32-bit executables and 64-bit kernel will be built. It should boot if debian-rpi-sd-builder.sh is used. It will not if devuan-rpi-sd-builder.sh is used, and the following steps are necessary. The difference comes from systemd-nspawn versus chroot.

1. mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt
2. mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/boot/firmware
3. echo arm_64bit=1 >>/mnt/boot/firmware/config.txt
4. cp -p /mnt/usr/lib/linux-image-*-arm64/broadcom/bcm*rpi*.dtb /mnt/boot/firmware
5. umount /mnt/boot/firmware
6. umount /mnt

Other image builders

• https://github.com/pyavitz/rpi-img-builder (For Ubuntu, Debian and Devuan)
• https://raspi.debian.net/daily-images/ (for Debian, of course)
• https://evolvis.org/plugins/scmgit/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=shellsnippets/shellsnippets.git;a=blob;f=posix/mkrpi3b%2Bimg.sh;hb=HEAD (for Debian, RPi3)
• https://github.com/debian-pi/raspbian-ua-netinst

If you find another builder not listed above, please open a github issue. Where is the Ubuntu official builder?

Debian ARM mailing list

https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/ is a mailing list for talking Debian ARM related topics, including Raspberry Pi.