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This is the main bag to build an aarch64 ISO using arch linux that will be focused around astronomical software like kstars and indi.

!!! DRAGONS AHEAD !!!

If you are here you likely know what you're going to do, this section is strictly for people who wants to test how to build the .img I package from scratch

The guide is for the raspberry pi aarch64 version of arch linux but it should work with any version.

How to build the ISO

Prepare the SD card

Insert the SD card into your PC and check under which device name it presents itself (it may be /dev/sdX or /dev/mmcblkX), the guide will assume it's /dev/mmcblk0, if your PC mounts the card automatically you need to unmount it before proceeding

The next commands assume that after type X an enter is given to confirm the command

  • Run fdisk typing sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
  • type o this will wipe all the existing partitions from the card
  • type n then p then 1, when prompted for the first sector press enter, when prompted for the last sector type +512M (some guides report 100M but from personal experience that is not enough as after all updates the boot partition will be full)
  • type t and then type 0c to modify the just created partition to W95FAT LBA
  • type n then p and take note of the number under End this will be used as starting point for the next partition
  • type n then p then 2, when prompted for the First sector check if the default value is bigger than the number you noted before, if it's bigger confirm with enter otherwise add 1 to the number annotated before and use it in this step
  • confirm the Last sector with enter
  • type w to write the changes to the card, this will also exit fdisk.
  • type sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 (/dev/sdX1 for sd like devices)
  • type sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2

At this point the SD card is ready!

Raspberry Pi 4 C0 (sd issue on boot)

BE AWARE AND READ THIS! If you have a recent model marked as C0 (look here https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15422&start=20) You need to tweak 2 things to be able to boot:

  1. You don't need to do the sed command from the next step and you don't need to add the second entry in /etc/fstab
  2. you additionally need to edit /boot/boot.txt, edit the two lines starting with booti changing fdt_addr_r to fdt_addr
  3. run sudo ./mkscr within the boot/ folder after 2 otherwise the changes won't be written into the bootloader

Burn the iso to the SD card

We will proceed with moving the arch iso to the SD card

  • mkdir arch-install && cd arch-install
  • mkdir boot
  • mkdir root
  • wget http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz
  • sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 boot/
  • sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 root/
  • bsdtar -xpf ArchLinuxARM-rpi-aarch64-latest.tar.gz -C root
  • sudo mv root/boot/* boot
  • sudo sed -i 's/mmcblk0/mmcblk1/g' root/etc/fstab
  • edit the file root/etc/fstab adding the following line /dev/mmcblk1p2 / ext4 defaults 0 0
  • sudo umount boot/ root/

Congratz! Your SD card is ready, insert it into your raspberry and boot it!

First boot

Connect your raspberry pi to your netowork via an ethernet cable, you can ssh into it after the boot using ssh alarm@IP_OF_YOUR_RASPBERRY the password will be alarm

You'll be dropped into alarm shell and now we can proceed:

  • become sudo with su - the password is root
  • type curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devDucks/astroarch/main/astroarch_build.sh > astroarch_build.sh
  • type bash astroarch_build.sh

This is the only thing required, the rest of the procedure is fully automated!

Manual steps to finalize the image

After reboot, few final steps may be made to improve further the final image, mainly:

  • Use UUID in /etc/fstab so that the image can start with every media attached (SD, USB, HDD, SDD) Dump the following table into /etc/fstab, to know the partition id simply run sudo blkid and look for UUID values 
    # Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
UUID=XXXX-XXXX  /boot   vfat    defaults        0       0
UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX  / ext4 defaults 0 1
  • Set the theme to dark breeze
  • Set a wallpaper
  • Edit /boot/cmdline.txt replacing the default content with 
    root=UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX rw rootwait console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 fsck.repair=yes
  • start Kstars without acknowledging any message, start ekos simulator, go to the guiding tab and download the most common indexes
  • enable the resize script to do its magic on the user's first boot - run sudo systemctl enable resize_once
  • enable the access point script to do its magic on the user's first boot - run sudo systemctl enable create_ap

Now the raspberry can be turned off and the image packaging can start

Repackaging .img file

Once astroarch has been fully bootstrapped the image can be repackaged to be distributed

Using pishrink follow these steps:

  • create a .img file of the SD card with sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=astroarch.img bs=8M status=progress (if mmcblk0 is not the raspberry SD card, change accordingly)
  • sudo ./pishrink.sh -za astroarch.img astroarch-X.X.X.img.gz

the gzipped image is ready to be distributed and can be flashed on other media