better-dockerpi

A Virtualised Raspberry Pi inside a Docker image

Gives you access to a virtualised ARM based Raspberry Pi machine running the Raspian operating system.

This is not just a Raspian Docker image, it's a full ARM based Raspberry Pi virtual machine environment.

Usage

docker run -it ghcr.io/lspm-pkg/dpi

And when you get to root@(none):/# run passwd pi, and then exec /sbin/init.

Credentials are username pi and the password you set.

Then when inside, run sudo raspi-config and go into andvanced settings and expand file system; reboot.

By default all filesystem changes will be lost on shutdown. You can persist filesystem changes between reboots by mounting the /sdcard volume on your host:

docker run -it -v $HOME/.dockerpi:/sdcard ghcr.io/lspm-pkg/dpi

If you have a specific image you want to mount you can mount it at /sdcard/filesystem.img:

docker run -it -v /2019-09-26-raspbian-buster-lite.img:/sdcard/filesystem.img ghcr.io/lspm-pkg/dpi

You can also increase the Image disk size by adding a size at the end in GB. note this wants the model first.

docker run -it -v $HOME/.dockerpi:/sdcard ghcr.io/lspm-pkg/dpi pi3 128

Then when inside, run sudo raspi-config and go into andvanced settings and expand file system; reboot.

If you only want to mount your own image, you can build a much slimmer VM only Docker container that doesn't contain the Raspbian filesystem image by git cloning this repo and then editing the Dockerfile and removing the COPY.

If you want to use VNC, currnetly it is experimental and doesn't work as of the time of making this repoisitory.

You can make a issue or a pull request if you want, these greatly help us and you.

Which machines are supported?

By default a Raspberry Pi 3B is virtualised,

There are no other machines. raspi4b is too experimental.

Wait, what?

A full ARM environment is created by using Docker to bootstrap a QEMU virtual machine. The Docker QEMU process virtualises a machine with a 4 core BCM2835 CPU and 1GB RAM, just like the Raspberry Pi 3B. The official Raspbian image is mounted and booted along with a modified QEMU compatible kernel.

You'll see the entire boot process logged to your TTY until you're prompted to log in with the username/password pi/raspberry.

pi@raspberrypi:~$ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.15.61-v8+ #1579 SMP PREEMPT Fri Aug 26 11:16:44 BST 2022 aarch64 GNU/Linux
pi@raspberrypi:~$ cat /etc/os-release | head -n 1
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
pi@raspberrypi:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS        : 125.00
Features        : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

processor       : 1
BogoMIPS        : 125.00
Features        : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

processor       : 2
BogoMIPS        : 125.00
Features        : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

processor       : 3
BogoMIPS        : 125.00
Features        : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

Hardware        : BCM2835
Model           : Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
pi@raspberrypi:~$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           921Mi        63Mi       456Mi       0.0Ki       401Mi       800Mi
Swap:           99Mi          0B        99Mi
pi@raspberrypi:~$ curl neofetch.sh | bash
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  378k  100  378k    0     0  33443      0  0:00:11  0:00:11 --:--:-- 37519
       _,met$$$$$gg.          pi@raspberrypi 
    ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       -------------- 
  ,g$$P"        """Y$$.".     OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) aarch64 
 ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ 
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:   Kernel: 5.15.61-v8+ 
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$    Uptime: 11 mins 
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P    Packages: 563 (dpkg) 
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'    Shell: bash 5.1.4 
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'      Terminal: not a tty 
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'         CPU: BCM2835 (4) @ 700MHz 
 `$$b      "-.__              Memory: 127MiB / 921MiB 
  `Y$$
   `Y$$.                                              
     `$$b.                                            
       `Y$$b.
          `"Y$b._
              `"""

pi@raspberrypi:~$ 

Build

Build this image yourself by checking out this repo, cd ing into it and running:

docker build -t dpi .

Credit

Thanks to luke childs's dockerpi repo for the inspiration. (https://github.com/lukechilds/dockerpi)