User:Maffblaster/Projects/GenPi64

[[Article description::A short set of notes for working with embedded disk images on Linux, specifically Build.Dist disk images produced by the GenPi64 project.]] It is easy to use a more powerful machine in order to operate on disk images.

Get the code
Currently upstream is using the  branch for development. Helps to have the code around for troubleshooting and/or debugging purposes.

Download, extract, and mount image
As of the present, the community ran GenPi64 project produces zstd compressed files. In order to actively work with one of these images, a few setup steps are necessary.

Download the image from GenPi64.com:

Extract the image to a work area. Tips this can be in zram, tmpfs, or the generic filesystem.

Follow the extraction by mounting the image using. If everything goes well and there are no other loop devices mounted, the output of the command will be :

Long listing the device will show all available partitions for the loop mounted image. For GenPi64 the output should look like the following:

Finally, create mount points if necessary and mount the partitions:

Chrooting
tends to save a few steps in mounting all the virtual file systems.

Alternative mound (without ):

Kernel
Follow the guide from the Raspberry Pi Foundation for compiling the kernel. At the time of this writing, compilation for the Raspberry Pi 4 looks like:

Writing the image
Generally the image will be written to a microSD card via mmc connection:

Custom kernel compiling
Download a branch of the Raspberry Pi Foundation sources from GitHub. For this example rpi-5.11.y will be used:

Modify the kernel following the directions on

After modifying the kernel, manually tweak the CONFIG_LOCALVERSION configuration value so that the installed modules do not clobber existing modules in :

Appending the suffix  specifies the build is for the Pi 4.

CPU frequency scaling
Being a general purpose device, the base clock of the Rpi 4 is 700 MHz, however the clock speed should scale as appropriate for the duties performed. Here are a few tips to help adjust from the alpha5 GenPi64 base image:


 * Change the default CPUfreq governor from  to.
 * Install
 * Set the governor to ondemand:
 * Measure CPU frequency speed with:
 * Overclock the ARM core to at least 1200 MHz via . Default arm_freq value for the Rpi4 is  according to this list.

Bootloader firmware update
It is wise to check the firmware for updates every few months:

Set static IP address
By default the system will pull a DHCP address. In order to set a static IP on the network, NetworkManager is the utility available for this purpose. It will need added to the default runlevel (for OpenRC images).