Running Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3

This guide describes how to get Photon OS up and running on Raspberry Pi 3 (referred to interchangeably as "RPi3" in this guide).

• About Photon OS
• Requirements
• Downloading Photon OS for Raspberry Pi 3
• Installing Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3

About Photon OS

For an overview of Photon OS, see https://vmware.github.io/photon/.

Requirements

Installing Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3 requires the following resources:

Resource	Description
Raspberry Pi 3	Raspberry Pi 3 Model B or Model B+ board. This will serve as the target of the installation.
Host computer	A computer equipped with the following: 1. An SD card reader. 2. Software utilities to flash an image onto an SD-card (details and instructions provided below).
Distribution File	Photon OS RPi3 image downloaded from bintray https://bintray.com/vmware/photon/3.0#files/3.0%2FBeta%2Frpi3. (Note: Photon OS RPi3 image is available only from Photon 3.0 onwards).

Downloading Photon OS for Raspberry Pi 3

To install Photon OS on a Raspberry Pi 3, you will need to download the Photon OS RPi3 image, which is distributed as a compressed raw disk image (with the file extension .raw.xz). (Note: You cannot use the Photon ISO to install on RPi3). Go to the following bintray URL and download the latest release of Photon OS image for RPi3: https://bintray.com/vmware/photon/3.0#files/3.0%2FBeta%2Frpi3. For instructions, see Downloading Photon OS.

Installing Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3

You can get Photon OS up and running on an RPi3 board, by flashing the Photon RPi3 image onto the board's SD card, as outlined in the steps below.

Step 1: Flash Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3

After you've downloaded the Photon RPi3 image (with the file extension .raw.xz), you can choose one of the methods below to flash it onto the RPi3's SD card.

Method A: Flash Photon to RPi3 using Etcher

• Install Etcher https://etcher.io/, which is a utility to flash SD cards attached to your host computer.
• Plug the RPi3's SD card into your host computer's SD card reader.
• Proceed through the 3 steps in the Etcher GUI ("Select image" -> "Select drive" -> "Flash"), selecting the Photon OS RPi3 image in the first step, and the RPi3's SD card in the second.

Method B: Flash Photon to RPi3 using Linux CLI:

• If you have Linux running on your host computer, install the xz package (which provides the xz compression utility and related tools) from your distribution's package manager.

• Plug the RPi3's SD card into your host computer's SD card reader.

• Identify the device file under /dev that refers to the RPi3's SD card. For example, this could be something like /dev/sdc. This file path will be used to flash the Photon image onto the RPi3 in the next step.

• IMPORTANT: Make sure that you are flashing to the correct device file -- the one that actually refers to your RPi3's SD card (it may not be /dev/sdc in your case)! Running the below command with an incorrect device file will overwrite that device without warning and may result in a corrupted disk! You have been WARNED!!!

• Assuming /dev/sdc refers to your RPi3's SD card plugged into your host computer, run the following command (without the angle brackets) to flash Photon onto it:

  xzcat <photon-rpi3-image.raw.xz> | sudo dd of=/dev/sdc bs=4M conv=fsync

Step 2: Boot Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3

After you've flashed Photon OS successfully onto the RPi3's SD card, eject the card from your host computer and plug it back into the RPi3 board. Power ON the Raspberry Pi 3, and enjoy Photon OS booting on your RPi3 board!

After the splash screen, Photon will prompt you to log in.

Step 3: Update login credentials

Note : The Photon OS RPi3 image has been configured with a default password. However, all Photon OS instances that are created using this image will require an immediate password change upon login. The default account credentials are:

Setting	Value
Username	root
Password	changeme

After you provide these credentials, Photon prompts you to create a new password and type it a second time to verify it. For security, Photon OS forbids common dictionary words for the root password. Once logged in, you will see the shell prompt.

You have now successfully set up Photon OS on Raspberry Pi 3! You can now run tdnf list to view all the ARM packages available to install on Photon OS. Also, check out the Photon OS wiki for some cool things you can try out with the latest release of Photon OS.