This repository serves as the glue to build custom Talos images for the Raspberry Pi 5. It patches the Kernel and Talos build process to use the Linux Kernel source provided by raspberrypi/linux.

Tested on

So far, this release has been verified on:

✅ Hardware
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 on Compute Module 5 IO Board
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Lite on DeskPi Super6C
Raspberry Pi 5b with RS-P11 for RS-P22 RPi5

What's not working?

Booting from USB: USB is only available once LINUX has booted up but not in U-Boot.

How to use?

The releases on this repository align with the corresponding Talos version. There is a raw disk image (initial setup) and an installer image (upgrades) provided.

Examples

Initial:

unzstd metal-arm64-rpi.raw.zst
dd if=metal-arm64-rpi.raw of=<disk> bs=4M status=progress
sync

Upgrade:

talosctl upgrade \
  --nodes <node IP> \
  --image ghcr.io/talos-rpi5/installer:<version>

Building

Using GitHub Actions

The CI workflow builds and publishes images automatically. It is triggered when you push a version tag:

Push a tag matching v*.*.* — this triggers the full build and creates a GitHub Release:
```
git tag v1.11.5-cm5
git push origin v1.11.5-cm5
```

Local build

If you'd like to make modifications, it is possible to create your own build. Bellow is an example of the standard build.

# Clones all dependencies and applies the necessary patches
make checkouts patches

# Builds the Linux Kernel (can take a while)
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> kernel

# Builds the overlay (U-Boot, dtoverlays ...)
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> overlay

# Final step to build the installer and disk image
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> installer

Extensions support

Talos system extensions can be baked into the installer image at build time.

Makefile variables:

EXTENSIONS ?=
EXTENSION_ARGS = $(foreach ext,$(EXTENSIONS),--system-extension-image $(ext))

EXTENSIONS is a space-separated list of image:tag@sha256:digest references passed as a make variable at build time — no Makefile edits needed. Internally, the Makefile expands each entry into a --system-extension-image flag and passes them all to the Talos imager.

Adding extensions to the CI build:

Just add a new EXTENSION_* env var at the top of .github/workflows/build.yaml — the digest resolution step automatically loops through all vars matching that prefix:

env:
  EXTENSION_ISCSI_IMAGE: ghcr.io/siderolabs/iscsi-tools:v0.2.0
  EXTENSION_UTIL_LINUX_IMAGE: ghcr.io/siderolabs/util-linux-tools:2.41.2
  EXTENSION_MY_IMAGE: ghcr.io/siderolabs/my-extension:v1.0.0   # ← just add this

The workflow resolves the digest for each at build time and assembles the full EXTENSIONS string automatically.

Adding extensions for a local build:

# Resolve the digest first
DIGEST=$(crane digest ghcr.io/siderolabs/foo-extension:v1.0.0)

make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> \
  EXTENSIONS="ghcr.io/siderolabs/foo-extension:v1.0.0@${DIGEST}" \
  installer-pi5

Pass multiple extensions as a space-separated string inside the quotes.

License

See LICENSE.