Raspberry Pi 5 & Pi 4 Talos Builder

This repository builds custom Talos Linux images for the Raspberry Pi 5 and Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4. 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?

Each release contains disk images and installer images for both Raspberry Pi 5 and Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4 platforms.

Examples

Initial:

# Raspberry Pi 5 / CM5
unzstd metal-arm64-rpi5.raw.zst
dd if=metal-arm64-rpi5.raw of=<disk> bs=4M status=progress

# Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4
unzstd metal-arm64-rpi4.raw.zst
dd if=metal-arm64-rpi4.raw of=<disk> bs=4M status=progress

Upgrade:

# Raspberry Pi 5 / CM5
talosctl upgrade \
  --nodes <node IP> \
  --image ghcr.io/talos-rpi5/installer:<version>-rpi5

# Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4
talosctl upgrade \
  --nodes <node IP> \
  --image ghcr.io/talos-rpi5/installer:<version>-rpi4

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 builds both Raspberry Pi 5 and Pi 4 / CM4 images and creates a GitHub Release:

  git tag v1.11.6
  git push origin v1.11.6
  

Local build

If you'd like to make modifications, it is possible to create your own build.

# Full pipeline for Raspberry Pi 5
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> pi5

# Full pipeline for Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> pi4

Or step by step:

# Clone dependencies and apply patches
make checkouts patches-pi5   # or patches-pi4

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

# Build the overlay (Pi5 only — Pi4 uses the stock siderolabs overlay)
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> overlay

# Build the installer and disk image
make REGISTRY=ghcr.io REGISTRY_USERNAME=<username> installer-pi5   # or installer-pi4

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.