Copying custom dtbo to /boot/overlays?

Product support
1

Is there any way to copy custom overlays into the /boot/overlays directory? Or is this a manual-only undertaking?

4

Does somebody can help with this question?

Thanks

6

Hi @drewcovi, @rlev

Can you please provide us with a bit more information on what exactly you’d like to do?

There is also a section in our documentation on this that could be helpful: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/OS/advanced/#setting-device-tree-overlays-dtoverlay-and-parameters-dtparam

Kind regards
Alida

8

Hi @AlidaOdendaal

I have a custom compiled .dtbo file and I would like to include in the BalenaOS.

How to do this?

Thanks

10

Hello, to add a custom .dtbo you could try opening a PR to https://github.com/balena-os/balena-raspberrypi Have a look at https://github.com/balena-os/balena-raspberrypi/blob/master/layers/meta-balena-raspberrypi/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi/0006-overlays-Add-Hyperpixel4-overlays.patch which should give you a good idea on how to add these

13

Just wanted to add that we found another thread which might have some useful information for you: it explains how to load the overlays to a specific device so you can test and rapidly iterate on any changes Balena Fin + Optiga TPM Let me know if you need any more help with this

16

I’ve recently had the need to install a custom dtbo file for an LCD screen. This is what I did to add it to my device image:

  • create a loopback device (losetup -fP ________.img)
  • mount the boot partition of the .img to a temporary dir on my machine (mount /dev/loop6p1 $(mktemp -d))
  • copy the file into the mounted partition’s /boot/overlays.

It’s true, as above, that in some cases a particularly common dtbo/dtb can be included by an upstream PR, but there are tons of dtb/dtbo’s out there which it’s not reasonable to include in the base image by default. In cases like these, there’s nothing to stop you from adding it yourself!