Install Manjaro ARM (minimal) on a RasPi 4 to SD card

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Install Manjaro ARM Minimal on a RasPi 4 to SD card

This should be a complete list of commands that I used to setup piCore on my Pi 4B using a SD-card.

Disclaimer

It might help you to utilize Manjaro Arm on your machine. And the Pi specific stuff can be easily adjusted to other target machines.

I won’t get in details about how Manjaro ARM works but I list some resources in the Appendix. Also networking is not covered as my machines are cable connected and can find each other automagically.

lot’s of commands shown use sudo to execute with elevated permissions.

Be vigilant about your settings - especially disks and partitions.

Blindly copy and paste that stuff may brake and even destroy your running system.

Definitions

All machines are in the same wired network and are served with DNS/DHCP. piCore detects all at boot time so network works OOTB for me.

  • Pi - this is my Raspi 4B
  • manbox - chosen at first boot
  • manja - Chosen at first boot
  • host - my full featured Desktop machine where I prepare everything. [Manjaro Minimal (XFCE)]. If you miss a command I use, you might need to install manually. (I don’t remember which I installed manually before.)
  • rik - user with sudo access on host

Introduction

First we download the image from the Manjaro Distribution site. This states (2022-03-20) 21.12 but in fact the image downloaded is 22.02. Guess the web page label is just wrong.

This will be the 64-bit edition, so might not work on older hardware.

Prerequisites

  • Raspi Model 4B (others may work, too)
    • display and keyboard connected
  • SD card
  • A machine to download, burn, and modify the SD-Card.
    • mine is a Manjaro Linux minimal (XFCE) Desktop on a x64 machine.

SD-Card preparation

This will be done on the Host.

There are plenty of guides for that. So just brief here.

After burning the USB Stick you will have two partitions on your stick.

  • Partition 1 - Label BOOT_MNJRO

    This holds the Raspi boot files, the linux kernel and the initial root filesystem and has 214 MB. Also Raspi config.txt is located here.

  • Partition 2 - Label ROOT_MNJRO

    This is the root partition where Manjaro will be installed. There’s no need to manually resize that. The installer will take care later.

Installation

Plug in the SD to the Pi and fire it up. This will start a Installer basic installer to configure basic settings

  • Keyboard (choose)
  • User: manja
  • Group: add sudoers
  • Fullname: Manjaro User
  • Password: simple
  • Root Password: complex
  • Timezone: (choose)
  • locale: (choose)
  • hostname: manbox

Now a summary will be displayed and the system will reboot.

On the first boot the ROOT_MNJRO partition will be resized to use all free space on the disk.

Ready to Rumble

Now just login to the box. You may also directly connect via SSH as this is enabled by default.

References