Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 07:34:42 +0100
Message-ID: <20260101073442.Horde.2j_HdMMU5C6FkORtKJC3432@mindloot.net>
From: Simon Rupf <simon@rupf.net>
To: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: RPI3 not booting
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 <260BE49B-359C-409A-A346-AFE4D5167393@whitelist.co.in>
In-Reply-To: <260BE49B-359C-409A-A346-AFE4D5167393@whitelist.co.in>
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Hello Sagar,

I hope I've not missed someone else's reply to you.

> Yes, I have used the Raspberry Pi ISO, not the general one. It is  
> not booting.
>>> [...]
>>> I flashed the iso file and tried to boot older versions like 21  
>>> and recent 23.2 on RPI3B+.
>>>
>>> There is no boot screen. Does it require flashing u-boot?

I can confirm to you that the 3.21 armv7 tar-archive (and image-file,  
but I recommend to use the more flexible tar-ball) do work on the  
Raspberry Pi 3B+. I assume the aarch64 ones and later releases do as  
well, but just to give you a data point on what others have gotten  
working.

The image (.img.gz file) works like other ISO images and you can  
dd-copy it straight to your SD card. But it is a very small single  
partition and will quickly run out of disk space if you want to  
install more than a few basic packages and simple scripts.

Hence it is better to use the tar-archive method. This requires that  
you create a FAT32 partition by yourself of the appropriate size (I'd  
recommend at least 4 GiB). It does not need to be marked bootable, but  
must be the first partition and at the start of that SD-card. You then  
unpack the contents of the tar archive onto it and are ready to boot  
it up. More details on that process in the wiki at:
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#Manual_method

Keep in mind that this gives you a disk-less install[1], so any  
changes, like installed packages or configuration changes and manually  
created scripts or data need to be persisted using the lbu utility[2].  
So make sure that FAT32-partition is large enough to hold all the  
installed packages and any other data you want to persist.

[1] https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Diskless_Mode
[2] https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_local_backup

The nice thing about this mode is that if you make any mistake or if  
power fails you boot back up into a clean state. Also the SD-card will  
last a lot longer as it is only used during boot and when you persist  
changes with the lbu command.

HTH Simon