Flashing Linux to SD Card

How to flash Linux onto an SD Card?

dd if=file.img of=/dev/sdx bs=4M status=progress

where /dev/sdx is the SD Card block device (NOT a partition, the whole thing!).

Clearing an SD Card

The following clears the start and the end of an SD Card (or any block device in general).

SD_CARD_DEVICE=/dev/sdX
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=$SD_CARD_DEVICE bs=512 count=1024
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=$SD_CARD_DEVICE bs=512 seek=$(( $(blockdev --getsz $SD_CARD_DEVICE) - 1024 )) count=1024

Resizing an SD Card

After flashing the image you might wish to resize your filesystem to use all of your eMMC or SD-card.

Open cfdisk to change the partition size: sudo cfdisk /dev/mmcblkX

Select [Resize] and resize your partition to maximum. The select [Write] and accecpt with "yes". Select [Quit] to exit.

Finally resize your partition: sudo resize2fs /dev/mmblkXpX

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