How to copy “Raspberry Pi OS Lite” to microSD card or external solid state drive on Linux

Requirements

• Linux computer

Caveats

• When copy/pasting commands that start with $, strip out $ as this character is not part of the command

Guide

Step 1: extract “Raspberry Pi OS Lite” archive

$ unxz 2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img.xz

Step 2: copy “Raspberry Pi OS Lite” to microSD card or external solid state drive

WARNING: BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN RUNNING DD AS DATA CAN BE PERMANENTLY DESTROYED (BEGINNERS SHOULD CONSIDER USING BALENAETCHER INSTEAD).

Heads-up: run sudo fdisk --list to find device name of microSD card or external solid state drive to overwrite with “Raspberry Pi OS Lite” (sda in the following example).

Heads-up: replace sdn with device name of microSD card or external solid state drive (sda in the following example) and 2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img with current image.

$ sudo fdisk --list
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: F053B657-4758-4775-98B1-27256D3B46C9

Device           Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1    2048    1050623    1048576   512M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624    2050047     999424   488M Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 2050048 1953523711 1951473664 930.5G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p3_crypt: 930.52 GiB, 999137738752 bytes, 1951440896 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/debian--vg-root: 930.52 GiB, 999133544448 bytes, 1951432704 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: PSSD T7 Touch
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 33553920 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1        2048 976773119 976771072 465.8G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

$ sudo umount /dev/sdn*
umount: /dev/sda: not mounted.
umount: /dev/sda1: not mounted.

$ sudo dd bs=1M if=2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-arm64-lite.img of=/dev/sdn
1908+0 records in
1908+0 records out
2000683008 bytes (2.0 GB, 1.9 GiB) copied, 6.56049 s, 305 MB/s

👍

Contributors: Sun Knudsen

Wish to contribute or need help? Read the docs.