Rpi4b arm64 sd card creation from linux

[mbl-35]

Thanks garry for all your instructions..
I don't have any windows to create the Alpine (latest, , v3.11) base sd card. and all my tests fails to do it.
I can't get it to boot on rpi (aarch64):

• green led blink (4 times), or
• multi-color square and nothing else (no boot)...

I try to follow all instructions from the alpine site to deploy on sd card, and other forum, but no clear instructions for 64bits on rpi4b).

I am a newbe in alpine (but not on ubuntu) and want to have a alpine xfce desktop on pi4, and k8s onto alpine (all in 64bits).
If anyone could help me for base instructions ?

[linearlyIndependent]

What I did based on this tutorial and the Raspberry Pi Alpine Wiki:

1. download the aarch64 release and unpack it
2. download and copy the wireless drivers as described in the Raspberry Pi Alpine Wiki:
3. in firmware/brmc, there are some links pointing to other files in that directory. Delete them or make a copy of the file they are linking to and rename it with the link's name. This will be needed because you cannot copy links to a fat16 partition.
4. create a file named usercfg.txt with the content (I'm not sure if this helps but I have it):
   enable_uart=1
gpu_mem=32
dtparam=audio=on
5. Since you're on Ubuntu like me, use Gparted to partition the SD-card. Make a fat16 partition with at least 512 MiB but if you have a big card make it larger to be safe. If you want, make another partition on the remaining space. Apply all operations and add the boot and lba flag to the fat16 partition. image
6. Copy the unpacked stuff to the fat16 partition, you should have something like this: image, insert card to the Pi and boot it up.

After some seconds of the color screen the system should boot up. Then follow the instructions in this tutorial and the Alpine wiki link. Use chrony for NTP.

After you did the setup script, and did the instructions from both sources, add makestep 1 3 in the /etc/chrony/chrony.conf before rtcsync link.

I use Alpine Linux in the standard diskless mode and store stuff which I don't want to persist using lbu on the second ext4 partition. For a desktop environment and other extra stuff I guess you will need some time and research to find out how to set it up, especially if you are in diskless mode...

If your reboot and some configurations are missing you did not persist them using lbu.