Raspberry Pi 5B Specs¶

HW Released	Chip	CPU	RAM	Ethernet	Graphics
Oct 2023	BCM2835	Quad Core 2.4GHz Cortex-A76	2GB,4GB,8GB or 16GB	Gigabit Ethernet	micro-hdmi

Installing Rocky Linux 9.5 RC1 on Raspberry Pi 5¶

Note

start of documentation addendum 2025-03-18 : Crishna

Requirements¶

A Raspberry Pi 5
A microSD card (32GB minimum) or an NVMe SSD with a USB adapter
A computer running Linux or macOS.

Tip

If you have access to neither of these, at this point, you will need to insert the sd card or connect the ssd on to the hat. Boot with a usb stick inserted in the raspberry pi 5 (it will get erased), halt the boot process to install via network raspos on the usb key, refer to this resource.

This will provide you with a temporary linux Debian platform to install Rocky on.
An internet connection

Download the RAW image¶

Download the Rocky Linux 9.5 image for Raspberry Pi 5:

wget https://rockyrepos.gnulab.org/images/Rocky.aarch64-9.5_6.6.77_gc_patch_RC1.raw.gz

Once the download is complete, extract and write the image to disk (dump): [using your destination drive target, see bellow]
Warning

The following command will erase all data on the SD card or SSD (disk destination). Double-check the correct device using lsblk before running the command.
```
sudo gunzip -c Rocky.aarch64-9.5_6.6.77_gc_patch_RC1.raw.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M status=progress
```
This command will unzip and disk dump the gziped image simultaneously to your destination.

Replace /dev/mmcblk0 with the correct device (e.g., /dev/mmcblk0 for an SD card or /dev/nvme0n1 for an NVMe SSD).
Tip

Refer to the lsblk command to validate your drive destination.
Once done, force drive sync:
```
sync
```

First boot¶

Info

If you booted the raspberry pi from USB to create the image, shutdown the raspberry pi OS first:

shutdown -h now

If not already done, insert the SD card or connect the SSD to the Raspberry Pi 5.
Power on the Raspberry Pi and wait for it to boot.
Log in with the default account username: rocky, password: rockylinux at the console.

Postinstallation configuration¶

If you want to use the available space of your storage:
```
sudo rootfs-expand
```
Update the system
```
sudo dnf update -y
```

Set the time zone

sudo timedatectl set-timezone {America/Toronto}

Enable SSH (if needed)
```
sudo systemctl enable --now sshd
```
Create a user (if needed)

Replace username with your new username.
```
sudo useradd -m -G wheel username
sudo passwd username
```

Set up Wi-Fi (if using Wi-Fi)

sudo nmcli device wlan0 connect "WiFiName" password "WiFiPassword"

If you want to install the server GUI interface:

sudo dnf --enablerepo=extras install epel-release -y

sudo crb enable

sudo dnf groupinstall "Server with GUI" -y

If you want to prioritize RAM instead of swap file (for application, service), change the swappiness from default 60 to 10. Add in the end of the file.
```
sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf
```

At the end, add or modify vm.swappiness:

vm.swappiness=10

sudo nmcli device connect eth0

Info

Known issue for bluetooth patch file not found. If you can see "BCM4345C0.hcd file is missing" in the dmesg output:

sudo wget -O /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/BCM4345C0.hcd https://github.com/RPi-Distro/bluez-firmware/blob/bullseye/broadcom/BCM4345C0.hcd

Reboot and enjoy¶

sudo reboot

Info

Known issue: After installation of the GUI and a reboot, the network interface will not be connected. So after a reboot, in the GUI (or via console CLI after you log in), enable it.