KUBESAIL NOTES: To change boot order: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/raspberry-pi.html#BOOT_ORDER cd to recovery, edit the boot.conf, run update-pieeprom.sh, run ../tools/rpi-eeprom-digest then run ./rpiboot -d recovery
This is the USB MSD boot code which should work on the Raspberry Pi model A, Compute Module, Compute Module 3, Compute Module 4 and Raspberry Pi Zero.
The default behaviour when run with no arguments is to boot the Raspberry Pi with special firmware so that it emulates USB Mass Storage Device (MSD). The host OS will treat this as a normal USB mass storage device allowing the file-system to be accessed. If the storage has not been formatted yet (default for Compute Module) then the Raspberry Pi Imager App can be used to install a new operating system.
Since RPIBOOT
is a generic firmware loading interface it is possible to load
other versions of the firmware by passing the -d
flag to specify the directory
where the firmware should be loaded from.
E.g. The firmware in the msd can be replaced with newer/older versions.
For more information run rpiboot -h
Clone this on your Pi or a Linux machine.
Make sure that the system date is set correctly, otherwise Git may produce an error.
sudo apt install git libusb-1.0-0-dev
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot
cd usbboot
make
sudo ./rpiboot
From a macOS machine, you can also run usbboot, just follow the same steps:
- Clone the
usbboot
repository - Install
libusb
(brew install libusb
) - Install
pkg-config
(brew install pkg-config
) - Build using make
- Run the binary
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot
cd usbboot
brew install libusb
brew install pkg-config
make
sudo ./rpiboot
Fit the EMMC-DISABLE
jumper on the Compute Module IO board before powering on the board
or connecting the USB cable.
On Compute Module 4 EMMC-DISABLE / nRPIBOOT (GPIO 40) must be fitted to switch the ROM to usbboot mode. Otherwise, the SPI EEPROM bootloader image will be loaded instead.
In addition to the MSD functionality, there are a number of other utilities that can be loaded via RPIBOOT on Compute Module 4.
Directory | Description |
---|---|
recovery | Updates the bootloader EEPROM on a Compute Module 4 |
rpi-imager-embedded | Runs the embedded version of Raspberry Pi Imager on the target device |
mass-storage-gadget | Replacement for MSD firmware. Uses Linux USB gadgetfs drivers to export all block devices (e.g. NVMe, EMMC) as MSD devices |
secure-boot-recovery | Scripts that extend the recovery process to enable secure-boot, sign images etc |
secure-boot-msd | Scripts for signing the MSD firmware so that it can be used on a secure-boot device |
secure-boot-example | Simple Linux initrd with a UART console. |
The RPIBOOT
protocol provides a virtual file-system to the Raspberry Pi bootloader and GPU firmware. It's therefore possible to
boot Linux. To do this, you will need to copy all of the files from a Raspberry Pi boot partition plus create your own
initramfs.
On Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4 the recommended approach is to use a boot.img
which is a FAT disk image containing
the minimal set of files required from the boot partition.
Secure Boot requires the latest stable bootloader image.
WARNING: If the revoke_devkey
option is used to revoke the ROM development key then it will
not be possible to downgrade to a bootloader older than 2022-01-06 OR disable secure-boot mode.
Secure boot require a 2048 bit RSA asymmetric keypair and the Python pycrytodomex
module to sign the EEPROM config and boot image.
python3 -m pip install pycryptodomex
# or
pip install pycryptodomex
cd $HOME
openssl genrsa 2048 > private.pem
- Please see the secure boot EEPROM guide to enable via rpiboot
recovery.bin
. - Please see the secure boot MSD guide for instructions about to mount the EMMC via USB mass-storage once secure-boot has been enabled.
Secure boot requires a boot.img
FAT image to be created. This plus a signature file (boot.sig)
must be placed in the boot partition of the Raspberry Pi.
The contents of the boot.img
are the files normally present in the Raspberry Pi OS boot
partition i.e. firmware, DTBs and kernel image. However, in order to reduce boot time
it is advisable to remove unused files e.g. firmware or kernel images for Pi models.
The firmware must be new enough to support secure boot. The latest firmware APT package supports secure boot. To download the firmware files directly.
git clone --depth 1 --branch stable https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware
A helper script (make-boot-image
) is provided to automate the image creation process. This
script depends upon the mkfs.fat
and losetup
tools and only runs on Linux.
Normally, the Kernel modules and overlays for a secure-boot system would be provided in an initramfs and built with (buildroot)[https://buildroot.org/] or (yocto)[https://www.yoctoproject.org/].
This ensures that all of the kernel modules and device tree dependencies are covered by the secure-boot signature.
Since the initramfs
is part of the boot.img
it is possible to replace GPU firmware,
kernel and dependencies in a single file update.
Alternatively, for test/development the following instructions explain how a normal Raspberry Pi OS install can be modified to be booted with the secure-boot loader.
Copy the contents of /boot
to a local directory called secure-boot-files
Since the boot file-system for the firmware is now in a signed disk image the OS cannot write to this.
Therefore, any changes to cmdline.txt
must be made before the boot.img
file is signed.
-
Verify that
cmdline.txt
insecure-boot-files
points to the correct UUID for the root file-system. Alternatively, for testing, you can specify the root device name e.g.root=/dev/mmcblk0p2
. -
Remove
init-resize.sh
fromcmdline.txt
The -b
product argument (pi4,pi400,cm4) tells the script to discard files which are not required by that product. This makes the image smaller and reduces the time taken to calculate the hash of the image file thereby reducing the boot time.
sudo ../tools/make-boot-image -d secure-boot-files -o boot.img -b pi4
The maximum supported size for boot.img is currently 96 megabytes.
To verify that the boot image has been created correctly use losetup to mount the .img file.
sudo su
mkdir -p boot-mount
LOOP=$(losetup -f)
losetup -f boot.img
mount ${LOOP} boot-mount/
echo boot.img contains
find boot-mount/
umount boot-mount
losetup -d ${LOOP}
rmdir boot-mount
For secure-boot, rpi-eeprom-digest
extends the current .sig
format of
sha256 + timestamp to include an hex format RSA bit PKCS#1 v1.5 signature. The key length
must be 2048 bits.
../tools/rpi-eeprom-digest -i boot.img -o boot.sig -k "${KEY_FILE}"
rpi-eeprom-digest
is a shell script that wraps a call to openssl dgst -sign
.
If the private key is stored withing a hardware security module instead of
a .PEM file the openssl
command will need to be replaced with the appropriate call to the HSM.
rpi-eeprom-digest
called by update-pieeprom.sh
to sign the EEPROM config file.
The RSA public key must be stored within the EEPROM so that it can be used by the bootloader.
By default, the RSA public key is automatically extracted from the private key PEM file. Alternatively,
the public key may be specified separately via the -p
argument to update-pieeprom.sh
and rpi-eeprom-config
.
To extract the public key in PEM format from a private key PEM file, run:
openssl rsa -in private.pem -pubout -out public.pem`
Copy boot.img
and boot.sig
to the chosen boot filesystem. Secure boot images can be loaded from any of the normal boot devices (e.g. SD, USB, Network).