Boot and Install Raspberry Pi Over Internet - No SD Card Needed!

hello my name is gary sims and this is gary explains now the raspberry pi foundation have just released a new bootloader for the raspberry pi 4 on the raspberry pi 400 that allows you to boot and download and install an operating system on your raspberry pi without needing an sd card that you've programmed in another computer in fact you don't even need an sd card at all during the initial stages you can just get it up and running just by plugging it into the internet well if you want to find out more please let me explain okay so the traditional method of getting an operating system onto your raspberry pi is you take another computer even another raspberry pi or a linux mac windows machine you use the raspberry pi imager or you download something manually and then you copy that operating system onto a micro sd card which is what the raspberry pi imagery does and then you take that out and then you go over to your raspberry pi and you plug in that new sd card and you boot it up and hooray you've got an os and that is okay it's simple enough it works well it's reliable but it means you still need to have another computer which means if you were somewhere and you just wanted to getting the raspberry pi up and running let's say you were making some projects somewhere or even you know a weather station or a you know whatever you're doing or the fact that you just don't want to do that step you just like to plug in your raspberry pi and get it up and running well now you can now every raspberry pi has a bootloader that's the first code that the board runs when it first gets switched on it's the code that actually understands how you read an sd card or how you access the usb port so that you can then boot up further into an operating system now there's a new version of the bootloader that's come out that when there's no sd card when it doesn't see a usb uh device connected it goes oh what i do i know i'll try to connect to raspberry pi uh foundation over the internet and ask can i have an operating system please it's absolutely brilliant so this little thing on itself can actually connect up to the internet and download an official os onto the board now if you want to try that out of course you're going to have to change the bootloader which means in this very first iteration you're going to need to get an sd card with the new bootloader on it and then reprogram that and we'll talk more about that in a minute but in the future you can imagine all raspberry pi 4s that come off the production line raspberry pi 400 and then of course we hope further the raspberry pi 5 whatever else plans they've got will have this kind of bootloader pre-installed on it okay so to get a new bootloader on the raspberry pi what you need to do is program a micro sd card with the new boot loader you then plug it in to the raspberry pi and it kind of flashes over the new bootloader automatically so how do you do that we need to get the latest version of the raspberry pi imager program when i started my one up it said oh there's a new version available took me over to the website and i were to download it you need to do the same thing make sure you have the latest version then once you have that running you need to go to choose os then scroll down to misc miscellaneous utility images and then go for the beta test bootloader after you've picked that you need to select the order that you want to boot with and certainly right now you just want to pick boot sd card there are of course more advanced options there and then of course you want to select your storage and then write it to the disk now once you have your new micro sd card you go over to a raspberry pi you put it in there and you power it up what will happen is the green led light will flash in a consistent manner and then the screen will go green to show that the writing of the new bootloader has been successful now we need to take out the sd card you don't need any more in fact you could use it to install the os in a moment if that's what you want to do but with no sd card in there this is the amazing no sd card no external hard drives no usb just the board on its own you've just got to make sure you've got a keyboard plugged in and a wired ethernet connection plugged in just power on the board and when you do that it will actually now connect and start to this network over the internet install process now to go the first steps what you need to do is press the shift key for three seconds this is not something you want to happen automatically or without your kind of you know agreement so you press the shift key for three seconds and then after that you press the space spacebar to confirm and then the raspberry pi will go off and download a version of the raspberry pi imager for that board and then actually just use that raspberry pi imager as you would on any computer and to do that that means you pick the os and here in this example i am picking 64-bit uh raspberry pi os which is now an official version it's finally come out officially and then of course i'm choosing to write to a microsd card in fact i'm going to use the same one that i use to flash over the new bootloader and then you just hit the right button it will download the image write it to the sd card verify it reboot and then up comes raspberry pi os brilliant now network booting in general so that's booting from a local server in your local area network is a great technology and now being able to boot and install over the internet is a great idea if you want more videos on network booting for the raspberry pi please do let me know in the comments below and i'll see if that's something i can look into okay that's it my name is gary sims this is gary explains i really really hope you enjoyed this video i hope you try out this new feature on the raspberry pi because i think it's pretty amazing if you did like this video please do give it a thumbs up if you like these kind of videos raspberry pi videos videos about processors system on chips arm risk five anything then hey stick around subscribe to the channel don't forget you can follow me on twitter at gary explains and i also have a newsletter go to gary explains.com type in your mail address no spam but you will get the email okay that's it i'll see in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Gary Explains

Views: 96,360

Keywords: Gary Explains, Tech, Explanation, Tutorial, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 400, Network boot, Bootloader, SD Card, Micro SD Card, Raspberry Pi Imager, network installer, Raspberry Pi OS, SD Card Boot, Boot over Interent, Boot over Ethernet, Boot over networkm, Internet boot, network install, network boot

Id: shChBhapdTo

Length: 6min 3sec (363 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022