Image setup¶
Download initial image¶
In order to try out the Raspberry Pi examples you can install our initial Pantavisor-enabled image. This image contains a Debian Linux based container that provides basic connectivity and discovery services so that our development tools can be used to work with your device. You can download the base image from:
| Platform | Target | Flashable images | sha256sum |
|---|---|---|---|
| rpi3 | arm-rpi3 | download | 7026132a01842ea3ec45bf81155a0b8a28caaec7b2168b6a0f3509850d6a75aa |
| rpi4 | arm-rpi4 | download | d03f9862d95c5f431c3c50dbb19d150306eeca2d5d6f281a8ac22b6a100ac98b |
You can check other versions of our base image here.
Flash initial image¶
You can install this image with your preferred tool. Specific instructions for your operating system can be found on the Raspberry Pi installation instructions for Linux, for Mac OS as well as for Windows
Linux¶
For quick Linux instructions you can use the dd tool following these steps (remember to substitute /dev/sdX for the device node corresponding to your SD card):
unxz rpi3_initial_stable.img.xz
umount /dev/sdX*
sudo dd if=rpi3_initial_stable.img of=/dev/sdX bs=32M
sync
Mac OS¶
For Mac Os, the procedure is similar. First step would be to manually extract the rpi3_initial_stable.img.xz file. Then you could find the SD card device name by opening a terminal and running the following command:
df -h
You can see that on the bottom a 15 GB disk /dev/disk3 is mounted on /Volimes/BOOT.
After that, you can unmount it and flash it with the dd tool (remember to substitute /Volumes/BOOT and /dev/disk3 for the device node corresponding to your SD card):
diskutil umount /Volumes/BOOT
sudo dd if=rpi3_initial_stable.img of=/dev/disk3 bs=32m
sync
You can verify the image contents by opening the SD card partition named "boot":
Notes: What does this image contain?¶
Any Pantavisor device must have a BSP (Linux Kernel, Pantavisor binary and Linux drivers) and one to many apps (containers).
In the case of the initial RPi3 and RPi4 images, Pantavisor is running these three Linux apps:
- wifi-connect: automatically brings up basic cabled networking. If this fails, it will create a hotspot with SSID "Wifi Connect" that will let you to manually configure your device for WiFi connection.
- pv-avahi: it uses DNS multicast for device discoverability.
- pvr-sdk: contains tools to help your development and debugging.
The example image provided is running a few more things next to Pantavisor. For example, a ssh server for inspecting each one of the containers plus the root mount namespace to get more familiar with the system internals, tty console support for boot up debugging...
The images in this get started guide have been taken from our latest stable verion. Go here to see how to build your own images.