rpi-server-bootc

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for rpi-server-bootc

Chainguard headless server for Raspberry Pi 5, packaged as a bootc-managed OCI image.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/rpi-server-bootc:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The rpi-server-bootc container image is a Chainguard-native bootc OS image, not a repackaged application. It is a rolling headless-server root filesystem for Raspberry Pi 5, published as an OCI container and delivered to running Pis via atomic bootc upgrade on top of composefs.

Scope of this image is the container: the composefs root that Pi 5 hardware runs from once bootstrapped. The one-time bootstrap disk.raw (SD-card image with the VideoCore firmware, kernel, and initramfs on the FAT partition) is produced separately by the wolfi-vm rpi-server-bootc pipeline that consumes this image.

• Architecture: arm64 only. There is no x86_64 Raspberry Pi 5.
• Init: /sbin/init (systemd).
• Root filesystem: composefs-backed ostree deployment. The image declares /sysroot, /sysroot/ostree, and /ostree so bootc install --composefs-backend can populate them at bootstrap time.
• Container annotation: containers.bootc="1" — required by the bootc container linter to identify the image as a bootc-managed OS.

What is in the Image

Headless server profile (delta from the gcp-workstation-bootc template — all GUI and desktop dev tooling stripped):

• Kernel: linux-raspberry-pi (Foundation Pi 5 kernel with the composefs stack) and linux-raspberry-pi-firmware (Broadcom VideoCore ROM and DTBs).
• Bootc runtime: bootc-system, bootc-install, bootc-dracut, composefs, ostree.
• SELinux: installed but disabled at cmdline/config (phase 3 dogfood).
• Networking: chrony, iproute2, iputils, net-tools, OpenSSH client and server (with openssh-pam-config and openssh-service), tailscale, and nftables (required by podman's default netavark backend).
• Systemd / core: dbus, kmod, polkit, systemd-init, systemd-default-network, systemd-logind-service, udev.
• Filesystem tools: blkid, dosfstools, e2fsprogs, parted, xfsprogs.
• PAM / sudo: linux-pam, libpwquality, sudo.
• Diagnostics: byobu, curl, git, jq, man-db, ripgrep, tmux, tree, vim.
• Containers: podman-6.0.

Getting Started

This image is not run directly with docker run on a workstation — it is the root filesystem for a bootc-managed Pi 5. Typical lifecycle:

1. Bootstrap (one-off, on a workstation): build the SD-card disk.raw with the companion wolfi-vm/configs/rpi-server-bootc pipeline, which pulls this image and runs bootc install to-filesystem --composefs-backend against it.

2. Flash and boot: write disk.raw to a microSD card, insert it into the Pi 5, and power on. The Pi boots into the composefs deployment of this image.

3. Upgrade (ongoing, on the running Pi): pick up new digests of this image with

   sudo bootc upgrade
   sudo systemctl reboot

   No re-flashing is required after the initial bootstrap.

To inspect the image contents from a workstation you can still pull and mount it read-only:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/rpi-server-bootc:latest
docker run --rm -it --entrypoint /bin/sh \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/rpi-server-bootc:latest

Documentation and Resources

• bootc project
• composefs

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.