Subject: RPI3 not booting

From: Sagar Acharya <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:04:43 +0530

Dear folks,

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?

===============
Thanking you
Sagar Acharya
https://whitelist.co.in

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From: Naomi Rennie-Waldock <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:12:04 +0000

>There is no boot screen. Does it require flashing u-boot?

You need to use the Raspberry Pi specific archive, not the generic ISO

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From: Sagar Acharya <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 22:11:26 +0530

Yes, I have used the Raspberry Pi ISO, not the general one. It is not booting.

===============
Thanking you
Sagar Acharya
https://whitelist.co.in

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From: Simon Rupf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 07:34:42 +0100

Hello Sagar,

I hope I've not missed someone else's reply to you.

>>> [...]

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

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From: Farooq Karimi Zadeh <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2026 15:05:38 +0330

Thank you Simon for these pointers. I haven't got an RPi 3. But I'm 
quite a SBC lover and I've got two Libre Computer boards ;)

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From: Nathan Angelacos <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 13:06:32 -0500

> quite a SBC lover and I've got two Libre Computer boards ;)
I also have two Libre Computer boards that do not boot to Alpine.

This thread may be helpful:

https://hub.libre.computer/t/alpine-linux-install-on-le-potato/536

I found this to be a helpful in discovering what an SPL is.

https://schandupatla.medium.com/u-boot-spl-vs-u-boot-proper-002187445ee0

As an owner of several (working) RPi's, I decided to figure out u-boot
for LePotato later.  Just haven't had the time or interest to get
everything set up to initialize the hardware on the LePotato to finish
the boot process for Alpine.

If someone else on the list has already figured it out, please hit me
with a clue-bat.

HTH.

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From: Naomi Rennie-Waldock <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:34:17 +0000

>>You need to use the Raspberry Pi specific archive, not the generic ISO

Just to be sure, you used the img.gz not the iso? We don't provide an iso for Pi.

I don't think I've got a spare Pi 3 to test on at the moment, but you could try using the tar.gz. Just need to create a single partition, format as FAT32, and extract the tar.gz

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From: Sagar Acharya <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:00:50 +0530

Aah, sorry, yes. img file. I tried the armv7 21.5 img too. It's not working. No boot screen.

===============
Thanking you
Sagar Acharya
https://whitelist.co.in