Netboot an RPi4 with Manjaro

ARM
14

This is what I think is needed to get systemd to do the overlay work:

Install:

$ pacman -Syu mkinitcpio-systemd-tool

Then edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and modify your settings to include:

MODULES=(overlay)

BINARIES=(/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-volatile-root)

FILES=(/etc/os-release /usr/lib/os-release /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-volatile-root.service)

Edit HOOKS, by removing “udev” and replacing it with “systemd”:

HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect modconf block filesystems keyboard fsck)

Then change directory to /boot and run:

$ mkinitcpio -P

Finally modify your /boot/cmdline.txt by adding:

systemd.volatile=overlay

Now reboot and you should see something like the following for the root filesystem:

$ df 

Filesystem                 1K-blocks       Used Available Use% Mounted on
overlay                       925600      71388    854212   8% /

I am currently unsure if changing “rw” to “ro” in the cmdline.txt file makes any difference.

Warning: Play with this on a new SD image. Easy to get stuck in a spot with a broken image.

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