Raspberry Pi: Installing images on Linux

Post by **^rooker** » Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:04 pm

Most of the documentation found for installing some distributions on SD card for Raspberry Pi are tailored for Windows or Mac users.
This is pretty useless for someone using GNU/Linux, so I'm collecting some information here for how to write these image files (.img.gz) to an SD-card using non-fancy, plain-vanilla tools available under most distros.

Links:

Works-on-my-machine BASH script, so I don't need to remember how to dd the images on the SD cards:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

# Installation HowTo:
#   http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php/HOW-TO:Installing_OpenELEC/Writing_The_Disk_Image


function install_image
{
    local IMAGE_MASK="$1"
    local DEVICE="$2"

    if [ -z "$DEVICE" ]; then
        echo "ERROR: No device name given."
        exit 1
    else
        DEVICE="/dev/$DEVICE"
        if [ -b "$DEVICE" ]; then
            echo "Device '$DEVICE' is a block device. Good."
        else
            echo "ERROR: Device '$DEVICE' is NOT a block device."
            exit 2
        fi
    fi

    for IMAGE_GZ in `ls $IMAGE_MASK`; do
        echo "Image file: '$IMAGE_GZ'"

        IMAGE_FILE="$(basename $IMAGE_GZ '.gz')"
        IMAGE_DIR="$(dirname $IMAGE_GZ)"
        IMAGE="$IMAGE_DIR/$IMAGE_FILE"

        if [ ! -s "$IMAGE" ]; then
            echo "Need to unpack '$IMAGE_GZ'..."
            CMD="gunzip -c -d $IMAGE_GZ > $IMAGE"
            echo "$CMD"
            eval "$CMD"
        else
            echo "Unpacked file '$IMAGE' already exists."
        fi

        echo ""
        read -p "Press any key to start writing on '$DEVICE'..."
        echo ""

        echo "Copying image to device '$DEVICE'..."
        CMD="sudo dd if=$IMAGE of=$DEVICE bs=4M"
        echo "$CMD"
        eval "$CMD"

        # We only do the most recent file. Therefore exit for-loop now:
        break;
    done
}


function write_header
{
    DISTRO="$1"
    DEVICE="$2"
    VERSION="$3"
    IMAGE_MASK="$4"

    echo "============================="
    echo "$DISTRO (v$VERSION)"
    echo ""
    echo "Writing on device '$DEVICE'."
    echo "Using filemask '$IMAGE_MASK'."
    echo "============================="
    echo ""
    read -p "Press any key to continue..."
}


ACTION="$1"
DEVICE="$2"
VERSION="$3"

case "$ACTION" in
    retropie)
        IMAGE_MASK="RetroPie/retropie-$VERSION-*.img.gz"
        write_header "RetroPie" "$DEVICE" "$VERSION" "$IMAGE_MASK"
        install_image "$IMAGE_MASK" "$DEVICE"
    ;;

    libreelec)
        # Default SSH login:
        #   root / libreelec

        IMAGE_MASK="LibreELEC/LibreELEC-RPi.arm-$VERSION.img.gz"
        write_header "RetroPie" "$DEVICE" "$VERSION" "$IMAGE_MASK"
        install_image "$IMAGE_MASK" "$DEVICE"
    ;;

    openelec)
        # Default SSH login:
        #   root / openelec

        IMAGE_MASK="OpenELEC/OpenELEC-RPi.arm-$VERSION.img.gz"
        write_header "RetroPie" "$DEVICE" "$VERSION" "$IMAGE_MASK"
        install_image "$IMAGE_MASK" "$DEVICE"
    ;;

    raspbian)
        # Default SSH login:
        #   pi / raspberry (watchout! US keyboard)

        IMAGE_MASK="Raspbian/*-raspbian-$VERSION-lite.img.gz"
        write_header "Raspbian" "$DEVICE" "$VERSION" "$IMAGE_MASK"
        install_image "$IMAGE_MASK" "$DEVICE"
    ;;


    *)
        echo ""
        echo "SYNTAX: $0 (retro|openelec|libreelec|raspbian) devicename version"
        echo ""
        echo "The 'devicename' must be without '/dev/'."
        echo ""
        echo ""
    ;;
esac