Raspberry PI images

[Roger Oberholtzer]

Is it possible to make images that can be deployed on a Raspberry PI 4?

If so, are they only SUSE/openSUSE? I'm okay with that. But I'm
getting a wish request for Rasbian. So I thought I would ask.


--
Roger Oberholtzer

[Marcus Schäfer]

Hi Roger,

> Is it possible to make images that can be deployed on a Raspberry PI 4?

sure, also for other geeky devices :)

> If so, are they only SUSE/openSUSE? I'm okay with that. But I'm
> getting a wish request for Rasbian. So I thought I would ask.

We built them all using a SUSE OS here:

https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory:ARM/JeOS

type "rasp" in the search box and you see the existing image builds

The system used here is TW (TumbleWeed).

I have a few integration test images for rPI for Fedora and Ubuntu
but I don't build Rasbian. I think the Rasbian community also has
their own tooling and infrastructure to create images

Hope this helps

Regards,
Marcus
--
Public Key available via: https://keybase.io/marcus_schaefer/key.asc
keybase search marcus_schaefer
-------------------------------------------------------
Marcus Schäfer Brunnenweg 18
Tel: +49 7562 905437 D-88260 Argenbühl
Germany
-------------------------------------------------------

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 2:40 PM Marcus Schäfer
<marcus....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Roger,
>
> > Is it possible to make images that can be deployed on a Raspberry PI 4?
>
> sure, also for other geeky devices :)
>
> > If so, are they only SUSE/openSUSE? I'm okay with that. But I'm
> > getting a wish request for Rasbian. So I thought I would ask.
>
> We built them all using a SUSE OS here:
>
> https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory:ARM/JeOS
>
> type "rasp" in the search box and you see the existing image builds
>
> The system used here is TW (TumbleWeed).
>
> I have a few integration test images for rPI for Fedora and Ubuntu
> but I don't build Rasbian. I think the Rasbian community also has
> their own tooling and infrastructure to create images
>
> Hope this helps

Yep.

I am going to try to sell Tumbleweed over Raspbian. I am much more
familiar with Tumbleweed.

Can these images be built in a buildbox on intel? I guess as you run
code in the install to accomplish various things, you need to build in
an ARM system.

What I would like to do is cut down the packages and make it a
read-only file system that writes changes to a ramfs that is gone when
the system is restarted. Maybe that is best done on OBS. I usually use
kiwi locally as that works fine. But then I can use buildbox.

--
Roger Oberholtzer

[Roger Oberholtzer]

Maybe there is something that matches my needs here:

https://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/tumbleweed/appliances/


--
Roger Oberholtzer

[Marcus Schäfer]

Hi,

> Can these images be built in a buildbox on intel? I guess as you run
> code in the install to accomplish various things, you need to build in
> an ARM system.

For building an ARM image on x86_64 you have several options.

1. kiwi boxbuild

https://osinside.github.io/kiwi/plugins/self_contained.html

kiwi-ng --target-arch aarch64 system boxbuild \
--box tumbleweed --box-memory 4G \
--aarch64 --cpu cortex-a57 --machine virt --no-accel --box \
-- \
--description /path/to/image/description \
--target-dir /path/to/result_dir


2. Run in an aarch64 container plus binfmt

sudo podman run --rm --privileged \
docker.io/multiarch/qemu-user-static --reset -p yes

Now go and find a system container for aarch64 with a distro
in it for which we build kiwi for.

Run the container either with a bash or with systemd as the
entry point. Once you get to a shell:

Install kiwi into the container and build inside

3. Use the buildservice

4. Grab a raspberryPI and fetch the image we built for it.
Install kiwi on it and build there

5. Use AWS EC2. Run an aarch64 instance, install kiwi and build

> What I would like to do is cut down the packages and make it a
> read-only file system that writes changes to a ramfs that is gone when
> the system is restarted. Maybe that is best done on OBS. I usually use
> kiwi locally as that works fine. But then I can use buildbox.

Or you follow me on a new project that goes into that direction :)

See here:

https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:marcus.schaefer:delta_containers

It's about real app containers and some ideas regarding ALP.
But the project also contains a test OS (test-os-automotive-rpi)
which actually is an example system for the PI with an idea for an OS
that is actually only capable to serve as a launcher for app
containers. full or partial isolation of applications from the host
OS is a topic for the "software defined car" in the future and so
there is some ideas going there. For you it might be interesting
because of its read-only bits. Feel free to steal whatever you
need ;)

All this is WIP ... no warranty for nothing :)