Raspberry Pi 3 image spec

This repository contains the files with which the image referenced at https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi3 has been built.

Option 1: Downloading an image

See https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi3#Preview_image for where to obtain the latest pre-built image.

Option 2: Building your own image

If you prefer, you can build a Debian buster Raspberry Pi 3 image yourself. If you are reading this document online, you should first clone this repository:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Debian/raspi3-image-spec
cd raspi3-image-spec

For this you will first need to install vmdb2. As of July 2018, this repository still ships vmdb2, but will probably be deprecated in the future. You can choose:

• vmdb2 is available as a package for Debian Testing and Unstable. However, we require at least one feature that has not been included in any of the releases uploaded to Debian.

  Therefore, vmdb2 is presented as a submodule in this project. First install the requirements of vmdb2:

   apt install kpartx parted qemu-utils qemu-user-static python3-cliapp \
   python3-jinja2 python3-yaml

  Note that python3-cliapp is not available in Stretch, but as it does not carry any dependencies, can be manually installed by fetching its .deb package and installing it manually.

Then edit raspi3.yaml to select the Debian repository that you want to use:

• The images now build correctly with the main repository! If you want to build your image following the regular Testing (buster) distribution, leave raspi3.yaml as it is

  • Stable (stretch) is not supported, as we require linux ≥ 4.14 and raspi3-firmware ≥ 1.20171201-1.

• Testing is, however, constantly changing. You might want to choose a specific point in its history to build with. To do this, locate the line with qemu-debootstrap: buster in raspi3.yaml. Change mirror: http://deb.debian.org/debian to a known-good point in time. One such point can be mirror: https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20181204T164956Z/ .

  • Due to a missing feature on snapshots, to make the build work, you have to disable an expiration check by APT. To do so, edit raspi3.yaml to replace all apt-get invocations with apt-get -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false

Once you have edited raspi3.yaml, you can generate the image by issuing the following:

umask 022
sudo env -i LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 PATH="/usr/sbin:/sbin:$PATH" \
    ./vmdb2/vmdb2 --output raspi3.img raspi3.yaml --log raspi3.log

Installing the image onto the Raspberry Pi 3

Plug an SD card which you would like to entirely overwrite into your SD card reader.

Assuming your SD card reader provides the device /dev/sdb (Beware If you choose the wrong device, you might overwrite important parts of your system. Double check it's the correct device!), copy the image onto the SD card:

sudo dd if=raspi3.img of=/dev/sdb bs=64k oflag=dsync status=progress

Then, plug the SD card into the Raspberry Pi 3 and power it up.

The image uses the hostname rpi3, so assuming your local network correctly resolves hostnames communicated via DHCP, you can log into your Raspberry Pi 3 once it booted:

ssh root@rpi3
# Enter password “raspberry”

Note that the default firewall rules only allow SSH access from the local network. If you wish to enable SSH access globally, first change your root password using passwd. Next, issue the following commands as root to remove the corresponding firewall rules:

iptables -F INPUT
ip6tables -F INPUT

This will allow SSH connections globally until the next reboot. To make this persistent, remove the lines containing "REJECT" in /etc/iptables/rules.v4 and /etc/iptables/rules.v6.