RPi 4b/5b headless server image is back

ARM ARM news
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The RPi headless server image is back and now works with RPi 4b and RPi 5b.

Available here:

For install instructions, go to:

Any feedback is appreciated.

Pudge

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I was just researching for the last 2 hours if anything like this is available anywhere.

Still there are some things confusing me.

  • First, this page as well as the GitHub say that Endeavor on ARM is not maintained anymore. Is this information just out of date?

  • For the headless images. I donā€™t have the hardware to connect my RPi 4b to a monitor directly. In my understanding the major point of a headless server is that i donā€™t need to.

    Yet installation instruction states

    Connect the micro SD to a RPi 4b / 5b with a Monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

  • What is the difference between EOS-Arm and Arch-ARM? Does this image use separate a separate ARM Repo with some endeavour specific packages? or does it just make use of the Arch ARM Repo?

I would really love to use EOS on my RPI 4b.

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Itā€™s kind of out of date. EnOS ARM was not maintained anymore at one time. The creating images and other maintenance was just too much for one person to maintain.

Since then a new installer Script was created. Calamares was dropped, and the rootfs tar images were dropped, so things are much easier to maintain.

So EnOS is in a kind of Beta trial stage. My guess is It will probably be continued.

The Monitor, keyboard, and mouse are only for an easier installation. You can borrow a Monitor and keyboard, and mouse from your daily driver for about 10 to 15 minutes. Then once the server is installed, all you need is a power supply and Ethernet connection.

You can install the headless server over a SSH connection.

Click on the ā€œdownload raw fileā€ button open the .odt file with LibreOffice. So one can use a Monitor, Keyboard, and mouse for installation only, or use this tutorial / how to as a learning experience.

The Archlinux ARM repos are a separate entity from the Archlinux x86_64 repos. For 90 % of the packages, they are the same, just compiled for a different architecture.
https://archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&q=plasma&maintainer=&flagged=
Notice under the ā€˜Archā€™ column it says either x86_64 or any.

https://archlinuxarm.org/packages
Notice under the ā€˜Archā€™ column it now says either aarch64 (64 bit) or armv7h (32 bit) or any.

The EndeavourOS specific repo, there are a number of apps that @manuel has created to help users and make things easier. I donā€™t think the headless server utilizes any of these EnOS app.

Notice there are two repos, x86_64 and aarch64.

I hope that helps. If you have any more questions, let me know.

Pudge

EDIT:
I highly recommend installing the OS on a micro SD card, and have a separate USB 3 SSD for the data. Then go to here and follow tutorials Homeserver 1 thru Homeserver 3 to see how to interface with the headless server using only packages from the Archlinux ARM repos. No 3rd party software. Not real fancy, but it works well.

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Thx for your reply and answering my questions.

I certainly hope so. I expect a lot more consumer products on arm basis in the upcoming years and it would be a shame if Arch and itā€™s descendants like EOS would miss the transition.

I have spare monitors and certainly a usb-hub to connect mouse and keyboard, but I donā€™t have is a cable/adapter for that micro-HDMI port of the RPI 4. And for some reason itā€™s a pain to get one.

I tryied this approach, but failed on the nmap which didnā€™t find a single host.

sudo nmap -sn 192.168.0.0/24
[sudo] password for sgr: 
Starting Nmap 7.95 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-06-15 22:25 CEST
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (0 hosts up) scanned in 206.12 seconds

I guess itā€™s just needed to find the RPIā€™s ip, but checking my router it wont even connect. I have it set up to recive a fixed ip and it does with Rasperian OS and with Arch-ARM (which still wonā€™t let me ssh connect).

Ok, so there is a separate repo with some additional packages, even tough those might not be beneficial to my case.

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Here to give some more feedback.

To be honest, I was really disappointed the headless setup is not really supported. This seems to be the case for all arch-based images (Arch-ARM / Manjaro) I tried just as some other ditros like Tumbleweed.
So till yesterday I was stuck with Debian based ditros that supported my headless setup, but it was a pain for me do deal with.

Yesterday I got the hardware to connect to the monitor and installed the new EOS-ARM image.

Had some issues with a graphics-bug of the welcome app.

Other than that, what can i say.

Itā€™s not good, itā€™s not great, itā€™s freaking awesome. :star_struck: :heart_eyes: :star_struck: :heart_eyes: :star_struck:

All the limitations bothering me about, not only the debian-based systems, but more so the limited arm support are gone.
I never expected my RPI to run so well and the software to work just as nice as on my regular x86 systems.
I canā€™t praise @Pudge and who ever helps with this project enough. :purple_heart:

I still have to set up a lot of stuff, figure things out, but the first impression, especially compared to the other solutions I checked out. This feels like pure magic. :magic_wand:

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Thank you for the feedback. It is appreciated. :smiley:
I am glad things worked out for you.

It sounds like you might have installed the Plasma DE?

That is a compatibility problem between yad (used by the welcome app) and Wayland.
Next time log in with x11 and Welcome will be OK.

I assume you are running this on a micro SD card. The RPi 4 and RPi 5 run faster when run from a USB 3 SSD enclosure. On the RPi 4, if you have the latest on board firmware it will run off a USB device. RPi 5 runs on a USB device right out of the box.

The other devs, @joekamprad @manuel @dalto and @fernandomaroto are always around when I get in over my head. They have been very gracious with helping me.

Pudge

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Headless is the best way to use these machines anyway :beers:

I would love to see pi-hole images or NAS setup images that would be cool

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I did, as that the DE Iā€™m most familiar with, but I already switched to XFCE on this installation. I like to have a fallback DE even on devices I donā€™t intend to connect to a monitor for RDP access, but it does not need to be fancy (i will still theme the heck out of it :rofl:)

It was not on my first login on X11, but it was on the second attempt. For me it was not a big issue as I set up a cheat-sheet on my main rig for all the things I might want to do and used sshfs to copy most of my scripts and setting.

I will look into this. With the monitor-adapter I ordered an 128GB and a 256GB usb-stick. So I could use the smaller one for the OS and the bigger one for storage (nextcloud) and my 500GB external SSD drive would be able to backup both of those.

This is still a learning experience for me, but Iā€™m very grateful for the EOS-Team making it such a joyful one. :purple_heart:

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Which kernel do you use for the RPi 4b/5 images? The generic aarch64 one or the rpi one?

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EnOS ARM for RPi 4b/5 uses these kernels from the Archlinux ARM repos.

linux-rpi for RPi 4b Desktop
linux-rpi-16k for RPi 5 Desktop

linux-rpi for both the RPi 4b/5 headless servers.

Arch Repo Name Version Description
aarch64 core linux-rpi 6.6.50-1 Linux kernel and modules (RPi Foundation fork)
aarch64 core linux-rpi-16k 6.6.50-1 Linux kernel and modules (RPi Foundation fork) with 16k pagesize for bcm2712/RPi5 ONLY
aarch64 core linux-rpi-16k-headers 6.6.50-1 Headers and scripts for building modules for Linux kernel
aarch64 core linux-rpi-headers 6.6.50-1 Headers and scripts for building modules for Linux kernel

EnOS compiles the latest stable kernel version for Odroid N2 and Pinebook Pro

Pudge

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