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EuroLinux for Raspberry Pi Jump Start

About images

EuroLinux Raspberry images are made for Raspberry Pi 4 model B. The system is EuroLinux 9. The minimal images could work with older Raspberry Pi 3. But we won't support it even with 'best effort' as Raspberry Pi 3 does not meet the minimum hardware requirements for Enterprise Linux 9 or Enterprise Linux 8.

The basic credentials are the following:

  • user: root
  • password: raspberry

SSH Root login disabled

SSH root login is disabled by default on EuroLinux 9.

Raspberry only

The Raspberry Pi images also won't work with other ARM-64 computers as RPI images are specially tailored for this particular hardware.

Downloading and checking the images

Firstly choose the image from https://fbi.cdn.euro-linux.com/images. The Raspberry Pi images have the rpi-TYPE(where TYPE can be minimal or gnome) in their names. You can download the image with wget, curl or with your browser.

It's advised to check the image integrity by comparing checksums. The SHA256 checksums can be found at https://fbi.cdn.euro-linux.com/images/sha256sum.txt

Example download and checksum comparison:

wget https://fbi.cdn.euro-linux.com/images/EuroLinux-9-rpi-minimal-2023-01-02-sda.raw.xz
sha256sum EuroLinux-9-rpi-minimal-2023-01-02-sda.raw.xz
curl -s https://fbi.cdn.euro-linux.com/images/sha256sum.txt | grep EuroLinux-9-rpi-minimal-2023-01-02-sda.raw.xz

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Flashing the MicroSD card

With the image downloaded now, it's time to flash your MicroSD card. There are multiple options, you can use:

  • Raspberry Pi Imager, which requires manual compilation for the most platforms
  • Balena Etcher comes as AppImage so works with nearly every Linux distribution
  • dd program, which is the most CLI-friendly way, but is also recommended for experienced users

We recommend Balena Etcher as dd might destroy the system partition or other important data if used without proper experience.

Balena Etcher

Balena Etcher is one of the most popular and easy-to-use programs that allow flashing the SD cards for Raspberry Pi. It can also create other bootable media like USB sticks and more. Firstly download the AppImage from the official Balena Etcher website - https://www.balena.io/etcher/ (Download for Linux x64).

Most file managers will run AppImage when chosen and clicked. To run it from the command line firstly change the permissions then run. 

chmod 755 balenaEtcher-1.13.1-x64.AppImage
./balenaEtcher-1.13.1-x64.AppImage

The process itself is straightforward. There is plenty of documentation/videos about the Balena Etcher, so we trust that in case of any troubles you will be able to find a solution on your own.

dd

dd is a program that is older than Linux Kernel itself :). It is one of these little tool that makes Linux/Unix powerful. It can be used to flash the memory card by writing output to the memory card device.

Firstly insert the memory card into the slot. Then check with the dmesg device file that is corresponding.

The dmesg will inform about partition: 

[ TIME] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  Mass-Storage     1.11 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ TIME] scsi 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[ TIME] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdX] 250347520 512-byte logical blocks: (128 GB/119 GiB)
[ TIME] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdX] Write Protect is off
[ TIME] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdX] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[ TIME] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdX] No Caching mode page found
[ TIME] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdX] Assuming drive cache: write through

Where sdX is your SD card. To write you first need to decompress the image with the xzcat command and then pipe output to the dd (writing to the device requires root privileges, that's why there is sudo). 

xzcat /path/to/image/image.raw.xz | sudo dd status=progress oflag=sync bs=4k of=/dev/sdX

For example: 

xzcat ~/Downloads/EuroLinux-9-rpi-minimal-2023-01-02-sda.raw.xz | sudo dd status=progress oflag=sync bs=4k of=/dev/sda

Booting from USB.

EuroLinux 9.1 can be natively booted from USB on Raspberry Pi 4. You should flash your USB stick/disk in the same manner that you flash a micro SD card.

Early-produced RPI 4 might require firmware update.

Early-produced Raspberry Pi 4 might require a firmware update before booting the system from the USB.

Wifi setup

Wifi adapter works out-of-box. It's trivial to configure it from a desktop (Gnome). To configure the WIFI from the console you can use the following commands.

Firstly find the SSID (WIFI name) that you want to use:

nmcli d wifi list

Then you can provide a password on the command line (note password will be saved in bash command history)

nmcli d wifi connect WIFI_NAME password PASSWORD

or if You want to be prompted for the password

nmcli d wifi connect WIFI_NAME --ask

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Note that your RPI will automatically connect to the WIFI after reboot.

Disable the powersave mode on the Raspberry Pi WIFI card

The Raspberry Pi WIFI card by default enters powersave mode when there is not much going on. Some users reported a problem with broken SSH sessions and other closed connections due to this feature. To disable power save mode use the following command

iw wlan0 set power_save off

The problem with this solution is that this state won't survive system reboot. To fix that issue during startup you can add a network manager dispatcher script that will disable power_save on boot. Put the following script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

interface=$1
event=$2

if [[ $interface != "wlan0" ]] || [[ $event != "up" ]]
then
  return 0
fi
iw wlan0 set power_save off

into the /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/iw-wlan0-disable-powersave.sh, then add the execution permission

chmod +x /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/iw-wlan0-disable-powersave.sh

Enabling the I2C (I²C - Inter-Integrated Circuit)

To enable i2c you have to add the i2c_arm with flag on as dtparam to the /boot/config.txt

dtparam=i2c_arm=on

The following script can be used:

echo 'dtparam=i2c_arm=on'  | sudo tee -a /boot/config.txt

We also recommend installing i2c-tools.

sudo dnf install -y i2c-tools

After this changes, you have to reboot the system to start i2c.

Enabling SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface).

To enable SPI you have to add spi with flag on as dtparam to the /boot/config.txt

dtparam=spi=on
The following script can be used: 
echo 'dtparam=spi=on'  | sudo tee -a /boot/config.txt
After this changes you have to reboot the system to start SPI.

Feedback

If You want to leave feedback/request for change/bug report on EuroLinux Raspberry Pi images please use the https://github.com/EuroLinux/raspberry-pi-build repository.

If believe that something important from the documentation is missing don't hesitate to create issue in this documentation repository.