Experimental content repository for Raspberry Imager

uConsole
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Hey all,

if you have a spare microSD card and want to experiment a bit, here’s a way how to write images directly from Raspberry Imager.

Linux

sudo rpi-imager --repo https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jose1711/uconsole-rpi-imager-repo/master/os_list.json

Windows

  1. run Raspberry Pi Imager
  2. Click App Options → Content Repository → Edit
  3. Select Use custom URL
  4. Copy & paste: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jose1711/uconsole-rpi-imager-repo/master/os_list.json
  5. Click Apply & Restart

OS images: courtesy of @Rex (github limits the upload to 2 GB and Google Drive/Mega do not support direct links.

@Rex: is there a particular reason why /boot was renamed to /boot/firmware? If it would be located in the location then the customisation (hostname, user, wifi settings) would work too which would render initial configuration even simpler. As of today path to /boot/firstrun.sh is hardcoded in Raspberry Pi imager. Customisation now works - it is possible to set hostname, timezone, keyboard layout, create user + password, set wifi, enable SSH and provision Raspberry Pi connect.

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Update: added screenshots

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Moving it to /boot/firmware was a choice on Raspberry Pis part. Happened between bullseye and bookworm I believe. Not sure why, but my images are pretty close to stock besides kernel, rotation and some apps/scripts.

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It was a move made by RPi to be consistent with Debian (iirc). If you reach out to RPi about the imager being hard coded to an invalid location, they might actually fix it. Given that RPi images also use ‘/boot/firmware’ now, I wonder if customization in RPi imager will cause an official RPi image not to boot as well.

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You’re right. /boot/firmware is the new default also for official images for Raspberry Pi. The problem was that I previously used deprecated init format: systemd is expecting /boot/ fs, whereas cloudinit-rpi (https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/cloud-init-on-raspberry-pi-os/) is working fine with the new location.

I updated the os_list.json and briefly tested the customization option - everything worked fine including automated connection to Raspberry Pi connect.

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BTW I’ve raised a GH issue with RPI imager: [FEATURE]: Support split images · Issue #1585 · raspberrypi/rpi-imager · GitHub If it ever gets resolved we could have all the images in one place.

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Nice, maybe one day using RPi imager customizations won’t break @Rex’s images. Always nice to have dreams, right?

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If you use the latest Raspberry Pi Imager and the command in the original post, it should actually work.

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Nice! Now if they will fix it so random images can be customized without breaking.

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unlikely to happen as uconsole/devterm require custom kernel patches

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I’m not speaking just about uC/DT images at this point…

There is also a lot of community made images that aren’t in your repo yet, both from Rex and others. The hope is that with time, any image can be loaded in RPi imager and customized and still boot afterwards.

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If I have time and remember to do so, I’ll make a PR with more OS images from the directory I put together. Some images on there have direct download links which would make adding them especially easy.

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Thank you, PRs are very welcome. In the meantime I extended the list with a few more OSes.