Raspberry Pi USB device boot - RPIBOOT

This repository contains the Raspberry Pi USB device boot software known as rpiboot. The rpiboot tool provides a file server for loading software into memory on a Raspberry Pi for provisioning. By default, it boots the device with firmware that makes it appear to the host as a USB mass-storage device. The host operating system then treats it as a standard USB drive, allowing the filesystem to be accessed. An operating system image can be written to the device using the Raspberry Pi Imager.

On Compute Module 4 and newer devices, rpiboot is also used to update the bootloader SPI flash EEPROM.

For more information, run rpiboot -h.

Compatible devices

Devices supporting the fast Linux-based mass-storage-gadget

• Raspberry Pi Zero2W
• Raspberry Pi 3A+
• Compute Module 3
• Compute Module 3+
• Compute Module 3E
• Raspberry Pi 4B (requires rpiboot to be enabled first)
• Compute Module 4
• Compute Module 4S
• Raspberry Pi 400 (requires rpiboot to be enabled first)
• Raspberry Pi 5
• Raspberry Pi 500 (requires rpiboot to be enabled first)
• Raspberry Pi 500+
• Compute Module 5

Devices which require the legacy msd firmware loading interface

• Raspberry Pi 1A+
• Compute Module 1
• Raspberry Pi Zero

The mass-storage-gadget boots a Linux initramfs image that scans for SD/EMMC, NVMe, and USB block devices and uses configfs to expose them as USB mass-storage devices. Because it runs Linux, it also provides a console login via both the hardware UART and the USB CDC-UART interfaces.

The legacy msd firmware is a special build of the VideoCore firmware that exposes the SD/EMMC device as an emulated USB mass-storage device. The legacy msd firmware runs on Raspberry Pi 4 and older devices. It does not provide a console login or diagnostics, and although it loads quickly, write performance is significantly lower than with the Linux-based mass-storage-gadget.

Recommended rpiboot host configuration

The recommended host setup for running rpiboot is:

• A Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 5 computer
• A Raspberry Pi Powered USB Hub to supply power and data to the Raspberry Pi being provisioned
• High-quality, short USB cables
• Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit (Trixie)

The rpiboot host software uses libusb to communicate with the Raspberry Pi. rpiboot is widely used on Linux x86 (various distributions), Windows 11 (Cygwin), and macOS. Support for other platforms is provided on a best-effort and/or community-maintained basis.

Building

Once compiled, rpiboot can either be run locally from the source directory by specifying the directory of the boot image e.g. sudo ./rpiboot -d mass-storage-gadget. If no arguments are specified, rpiboot will attempt to boot the mass-storage-gadget from INSTALL_PREFIX/share/mass-storage-gadget64.

The Raspberry Pi OS APT package sets INSTALL_PREFIX to /usr.

Linux / Cygwin / WSL

Clone this repository on your Pi or other Linux machine. Make sure that the system date is set correctly, otherwise Git may produce an error.

• This git repository uses symlinks. For Windows builds, clone the repository under Cygwin and make sure symlinks are enabled. git config --get core.symlinks should return true. You can enable symlinks by passing -c core.symlinks=true to the "clone" command or enable them globally with git config --global core.symlinks true.
• On Windows, make sure you have run the rpiboot driver installer once; see usbboot\win32\rpiboot_setup.
• Instead of duplicating the EEPROM binaries and tools, the rpi-eeprom repository is included as a git submodule

apt (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt install git libusb-1.0-0-dev pkg-config build-essential

dnf (Fedora/RHEL)

sudo dnf install git libusb1-devel pkg-config glibc-devel g++ gcc make

Building

git clone --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules --depth=1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot
cd usbboot
make
# Either
sudo ./rpiboot -d mass-storage-gadget
# Or, install rpiboot to /usr/bin and boot images to /usr/share
sudo make install
sudo rpiboot

sudo isn't required if you have write permissions for the /dev/bus/usb device.

macOS

From a macOS machine, you can also run usbboot; just follow the same steps:

1. Clone the usbboot repository
2. Install libusb (brew install libusb)
3. Install pkg-config (brew install pkg-config)
4. (Optional) Export the PKG_CONFIG_PATH so that it includes the directory enclosing libusb-1.0.pc
5. Build using make - installing to /usr/local rather than /usr/bin is recommended on macOS
6. Run the binary

git clone --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules --depth=1 https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot
cd usbboot
brew install libusb
brew install pkg-config
make INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
# Either
sudo ./rpiboot -d mass-storage-gadget64
# Or, install rpiboot to /usr/local/bin and boot images to /usr/local/share
sudo make INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local install
sudo rpiboot

If the build is unable to find the header file libusb.h then most likely the PKG_CONFIG_PATH is not set properly. This should be set via export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix libusb)/lib/pkgconfig".

If the build fails on an ARM-based Mac with a linker error such as ld: warning: ignoring file '/usr/local/Cellar/libusb/1.0.27/lib/libusb-1.0.0.dylib': found architecture 'x86_64', required architecture 'arm64' then you may need to build and install libusb-1.0 yourself:

curl -OL https://github.com/libusb/libusb/releases/download/v1.0.27/libusb-1.0.27.tar.bz2
tar -xf libusb-1.0.27.tar.bz2
cd libusb-1.0.27
./configure
make
make check
sudo make INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local install
cd ..

Running make again should now succeed.

Updating the rpi-eeprom submodule

After updating the usbboot repo (git pull --rebase origin master), update the submodules by running:

git submodule update --init

Enabling rpiboot support — extra steps for Pi 4B, Pi 400 & Pi 500

Pi 4B and Pi 400

Raspberry Pi 4B and Pi 400 do not have a dedicated nRPIBOOT jumper. Instead, a GPIO on the 40-pin header can be selected which, if held low during boot, forces the boot ROM into rpiboot mode.

This is configured using the make-pi4-rpiboot-gpio-sd utility, which generates an SD card that programs the target device at power-on with the desired GPIO setting.

• Available GPIOs: 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• The selected GPIO can be used normally after boot, but it must not be pulled low unless rpiboot mode is intended. Confirm that this does not conflict with any HATs you may attach.
• This option permanently modifies the OTP and cannot be changed afterwards.

Example: build an SD card image that configures GPIO 8 as nRPIBOOT:

sudo apt install kpartx
sudo ./rpi-eeprom/imager/make-pi4-rpiboot-gpio-sd 8

Pi 500

Pi 500 requires the QMK keyboard firmware to be updated via raspi-config to the latest release to enable rpiboot through the power button.

Running

Compute Module 3

Fit the EMMC-DISABLE jumper on the Compute Module IO board before powering on the board or connecting the USB cable.

Compute Module 4

On Compute Module 4, EMMC-DISABLE / nRPIBOOT (GPIO 40) must be fitted to switch the ROM to usbboot mode. Otherwise, the SPI EEPROM bootloader image will be loaded instead.

Compute Module 5

On Compute Module 5, EMMC-DISABLE / nRPIBOOT (BCM2712 GPIO 20) must be fitted to switch the ROM to usbboot mode. Otherwise, the SPI EEPROM bootloader image will be loaded instead.

Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 500 and Pi 500+

• Disconnect the USB-C cable. Power must be removed rather than just running "sudo shutdown now"
• Hold the power button down
• Connect the USB-C cable (from the RPIBOOT host to the Pi 5)

Launch the Linux based mass-storage-gadget

sudo rpiboot -d mass-storage-gadget

Launch the legacy MSD firmware

sudo rpiboot -d msd

Provisioning extensions

In addition to the MSD functionality, there are a number of other utilities that can be loaded.

Directory	Description
recovery	Updates the bootloader EEPROM on a Compute Module 4
recovery5	Updates the bootloader EEPROM on a Raspberry Pi 5
mass-storage-gadget	Linux mass storage gadget with 64-bit kernel for BCM2710, BCM2711 and BCM2712
secure-boot-recovery	Pi4 secure-boot bootloader flash and OTP provisioning
secure-boot-recovery5	Pi5 secure-boot bootloader flash and OTP provisioning
rpi-imager-embedded	Runs the embedded version of Raspberry Pi Imager on the target device
secure-boot-example	Simple Linux initrd with a UART console.

The APT package for rpiboot installs these utility directories to /usr/share/rpiboot.

Booting Linux

The RPIBOOT protocol provides a virtual file system to the Raspberry Pi bootloader and GPU firmware. It's therefore possible to boot Linux. To do this, you will need to copy all of the files from a Raspberry Pi boot partition plus create your own initramfs. On Raspberry Pi 4 / CM4 the recommended approach is to use a boot.img which is a FAT disk image containing the minimal set of files required from the boot partition.

Troubleshooting

See the troubleshooting guide.

Reading device metadata from OTP via rpiboot

The rpiboot "recovery" modules provide a facility to read the device OTP information. This can be run either as a provisioning step or as a standalone operation.

To enable this make sure that recovery_metadata=1 is set in the recovery config.txt file and pass the -j metadata flag to rpiboot.

See board revision documentation to decode the BOARD_ATTR field.

Example command to extract the OTP metadata from a Compute Module 4:

cd recovery
mkdir -p metadata
sudo rpiboot -j metadata -d .

Example metadata file contents written to metadata/SERIAL_NUMBER.json:

{
        "MAC_ADDR" : "d8:3a:dd:05:ee:78",
        "CUSTOMER_KEY_HASH" : "8251a63a2edee9d8f710d63e9da5d639064929ce15a2238986a189ac6fcd3cee",
        "BOOT_ROM" : "0000c8b0",
        "BOARD_ATTR" : "00000000",
        "USER_BOARDREV" : "c03141",
        "JTAG_LOCKED" : "0",
        "ADVANCED_BOOT" : "0000e8e8"
}

Secure Boot

See the secure-boot reference.