New RPI 5 - question about guide.

Message

Gloom_Scythe · Post by **Gloom_Scythe** » Mon Jun 30, 2025 12:48 am

Hello Everyone,
I bought a new raspberry pi 5 (16gb) to play around with. I opted for the Pironman 5 case because I like that the nvme drive is not right over the cpu and the cooling is good. I a coming from an old RPI 3b. It is amazing how much quicker the rpi5 is. I added a spare nvme and can boot raspberry pi os from the nvme. I am not a big fan of rapbian OS and would like to install gentoo. I used Sakaki's gentoo image on the 3b. Gentoo seem waaaay better in performance vs raspbian.. at least on the 3b. I read that Sakaki is no longer providing updates to the genpi image. I was reading over gentoo's rpi guide but I think the guide might be out of date...
(https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Install_Guide) I realized that RPI uses /boot/firmware instead of /boot. I noticed that the firmware modules on RPI's git hub was named different than the modules/kernel in raspbian. Is there a more up to date guide or should I substitute /boot with /boot/firmware where-ever I come across it? I plan on booting from raspbian (raspberry pi os) from an sd card and install gentoo onto the nvme. Are the gentoo packages still up to date for the rpi5? I mean I don't want to install it if I have to use the old software like the software on Sakaki's github. I am turning my old rpi 3b into a pi hole.

Can I use the stage3 systemd or openrc with desktop? Do you guys suggest I stick with systemd since raspberry pi os uses systemd? I would much prefer to use openrc because I am not a big fan of systemd or its tools.

Thank You for the help.

Glad to see Neddy is still around and helped with the RPI guide!

Post by **John R. Graham** » Mon Jun 30, 2025 2:49 am

openrc works just fine on my RPi 5. I'm running the most heavyweight of DEs (KDE Plasma) with very respectable performance. I successfully used the guide you cite, although there were several small issues. I described my basic technique very briefly here.

- John

netsplit · Post by **netsplit** » Mon Jun 30, 2025 5:04 am

You should stick with whatever init system you want to use. OpenRC is pretty solid on my pi 5. You can use either stage3 for a desktop environment.

I found the Pi 5 guide benefited greatly from crossing referencing and familiarity with the amd64 guide. Once you get past the Raspberry Pi specific bits it's pretty much the same as an amd64 install the rest of the way in my experience.

One small difference you'll encounter is arm64 has more masked packages then amd64. Generally you'll want to unmask specific versions and avoid unmasking 9999 package version.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Jun 30, 2025 7:38 am

Gloom_Scythe,

The Pis (all of them) do not use the kernel filesystem tree at all.
Rather like grub at boot time.
At boot time, before the kernel is loaded, so before the filesystem tree exists, the Pi finds the VFAT partition and loads everything from there.
Hold that thought.

At update time, you mount the VFAT partition somewhere in the fs tree, so the kernel can write to it.
The guide uses /boot because it always has. You may name it anything you want, the Pi has finished reading it before the kernel starts.

Gloom_Scythe · Post by **Gloom_Scythe** » Tue Jul 01, 2025 8:16 pm

I just installed Gentoo using the guide. Still a little confused why the raspberry foundation changed the boot layout to use /boot/firmware instead of /boot. I noticed the kernel is a different version vs gentoo. Now I have to configure the make.conf file and start installing stuff. I am using the config.txt from my raspbian install (sd card) for gentoo. I there a list of packages that have been tested to work on the rpi5 somewhere? The firmware/modules from the git in the gentoo install guide does not
Match the firmware modules in raspbian. Will this be an issue? Is it possible to add something like raspi-config to gentoo?

Thank you for the responses!

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Jul 02, 2025 7:06 pm

Gloom_Scythe,

I don't know wdy the Pi Foundation moved to /boot/firmware instead of /boot.
The Pi5 SPI firmware and maybe the Pi4 too, supports loading things from <prefix> on the VFAT partition.

The kernel, its modules and the .dtb file are a matching set. The .dtb describes the hardware to the kernel. It does not change very often.
The kernel checks modules for the Version Magic all will not load modules with the wrong Version Magic.

Code: Select all

# modinfo bluetooth
filename:       /lib/modules/6.12.32-v8-16k+/kernel/net/bluetooth/bluetooth.ko.xz
alias:          net-pf-31
license:        GPL
version:        2.22
description:    Bluetooth Core ver 2.22
author:         Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>
srcversion:     0C816B2BE23C7124062024B
depends:        ecdh_generic,rfkill,libaes
intree:         Y
name:           bluetooth
vermagic:       6.12.32-v8-16k+ SMP preempt mod_unload modversions aarch64
parm:           disable_esco:Disable eSCO connection creation (bool)
parm:           disable_ertm:Disable enhanced retransmission mode (bool)
parm:           enable_ecred:Enable enhanced credit flow control mode (bool)

Notice the

Code: Select all

vermagic:       6.12.32-v8-16k+ SMP preempt mod_unload modversions aarch64

Raspbian has been replaced by RpiOS, The kernel in the install guide is whatever it was when I wrote that part of the guide.
The method, to fetch and install the binary from git will get you the current Pi LTS kernel. 6.12.y
There have been some performance enhancements since the guide first appeared. Increased DRAM refresh to make more memory cycles available for useful work. Fake NUMA, for improved cache performance. They both need kerneal and SPI EEPROM updates.
You may find https://github.com/NeddySeagoon/gentoo-rpi intersting.
WARNING: I'm not qualified on ebuilds.

Building your own kernel is really out of scope of the guide. The guide uses a binary kernel to get you going.
Once you boot into Gentoo and fix all the things that the amd64 handbook requires a chroot for, the Raspberry Pi Install Guide has got you where you would be with a amd64 install. Having said that, a Building your own kernel page would fit as a sub page of the guide, in the interests of making everything easy to find.
Use the Pi git sources, not sys-kernel/raspberrypi-sources.
sys-kernel/raspberrypi-sources is badry in need of a bump, It's not in my overlay as I can't make it work.

Any with an arm64 keyword will work on a Pi5. It's a bug if you find something that fails.
Almost everything with a ~arm64 keyword will work too. File a bug if you find something that fails.
www-client/chromium is now a 32 hour build on a Pi5. :)

netsplit · Post by **netsplit** » Fri Jul 04, 2025 3:06 am

NeddySeagoon wrote: www-client/chromium is now a 32 hour build on a Pi5.

Is it really that bad? Firefox update took 3 or 4 hours this morning on a Pi 5.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Jul 04, 2025 10:46 am

netsplit,

Its up from 24h when the Pi5 was new.

Code: Select all

CM5-Builder ~ # genlop -t chromium
 * www-client/chromium

     Wed Mar 19 02:30:22 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-135.0.7049.17
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 28 minutes and 5 seconds.

     Fri Mar 21 00:56:17 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-135.0.7049.17
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 34 seconds.

     Wed Apr 30 16:48:09 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-136.0.7103.33
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 41 seconds.

     Thu Jun  5 23:53:20 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.4
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 18 minutes and 16 seconds.

     Thu Jun 19 05:30:29 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.23
       merge time: 1 day, 8 hours, 20 minutes and 10 seconds.

     Mon Jun 23 20:56:59 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.35
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 38 minutes and 13 seconds.

     Tue Jul  1 00:49:37 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-139.0.7258.5
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 56 minutes and 56 seconds.

That's building on NVMe, on a 16G Compute Module 5 too.
The extra RAM doesn't do anything. Its about the same on an 8G Pi 5, on NVMe.

netsplit · Post by **netsplit** » Sat Jul 05, 2025 12:23 am

NeddySeagoon wrote:netsplit,

Its up from 24h when the Pi5 was new.

Code: Select all

CM5-Builder ~ # genlop -t chromium
 * www-client/chromium

     Wed Mar 19 02:30:22 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-135.0.7049.17
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 28 minutes and 5 seconds.

     Fri Mar 21 00:56:17 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-135.0.7049.17
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 34 seconds.

     Wed Apr 30 16:48:09 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-136.0.7103.33
       merge time: 1 day, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 41 seconds.

     Thu Jun  5 23:53:20 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.4
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 18 minutes and 16 seconds.

     Thu Jun 19 05:30:29 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.23
       merge time: 1 day, 8 hours, 20 minutes and 10 seconds.

     Mon Jun 23 20:56:59 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-138.0.7204.35
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 38 minutes and 13 seconds.

     Tue Jul  1 00:49:37 2025 >>> www-client/chromium-139.0.7258.5
       merge time: 1 day, 7 hours, 56 minutes and 56 seconds.

That's building on NVMe, on a 16G Compute Module 5 too.
The extra RAM doesn't do anything. Its about the same on an 8G Pi 5, on NVMe.

Wow I'm guessing QT Webengine is a core buster too. Glad I masked that.

Also nice command! I discovered I was an hour off when I tried it. Firefox took 5 hours.

Code: Select all

genlop -t firefox
 * www-client/firefox

     Sat Jun 14 15:46:16 2025 >>> www-client/firefox-139.0.1
       merge time: 5 hours, 8 minutes and 54 seconds.

     Tue Jun 24 12:14:37 2025 >>> www-client/firefox-139.0.4
       merge time: 7 hours, 8 minutes and 29 seconds.

     Thu Jul  3 11:53:27 2025 >>> www-client/firefox-140.0.1
       merge time: 4 hours, 59 minutes and 10 seconds.