Raspberry Pi Arch Linux ARM no-systemd

As most people know the I in IoT stands for connected to the internet. This means that the device must at any given time always be up-to-date with the latest security patches. Something which is often neglected for various reasons. This gives IoT a bad reputation...

This project was born to show that the above requirement is not that hard to solve. Our IoT device is based on the Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ with a life expectancy of five plus years. This means at least one distribution upgrade and those are hard if physical access is time consuming. Therefor we decided to use a rolling release distribution.

Because we are responsible for fixing every problem an upgrade creates, another requirement is knowing how all components work together. Systemd doesn't do that: it is a complex system which like a virus takes over the complete system. The solution is going back to a normal init process which has done a good job for decades!

For the rolling release distribution Arch Linux was chosen. It has an easy to understand packaging system. However the main project is only available for the x86_64 processors. It also favors systemd to the point that no packages for alternative init systems are available. The processor problem is solved with the Arch Linux ARM sister project. And the Artix Linux fork has multiple choices for init systems although again only for the x86_64 processors.

In this project we start with an Arch Linux ARM installation on the Raspberry Pi. Then we create an OpenRC and netifrc dependency package. With those and a small hack we switch to OpenRC, which is maintained by the Gentoo developers. After that we exchange all the Arch Linux ARM packages with those from Artix Linux. In essence we create Artix Linux ARM. However as a wink to Raspbian we call it Raspberry Pi Arch Linux ARM no-systemd or raspaans for short.

Raspaans is very similar to the Dutch word spartaans. It means very basic and exactly that is our goal.