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Slackware ARM project web site | Forum | Slackware ARM development documentation | Slackware ARM installation guides
Writing the Slackware AArch64 Installer Image to SD Card
| Platform | AArch64/ARM64 |
| Document Version | 1.0, Aug 2026 |
| Purpose | Provides instructions for writing the downloaded Slackware Installer image to an SD card |
| Author | Stuart Winter <mozes@slackware> |
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Writing the Slackware assets to the Micro SD
This document is intended to be referenced by the Slackware AArch64 Installation Guides.
It assumes that the user is running Slackware Linux as the host operating system on which the Slackware Installation image has been downloaded, and to which the SD card that will receive the installation image is attached.
Minor adaptations may be required if another Linux distribution is used as the host operating system.
Elevate yourself to root
On your Host Computer, obtain root:
sudo su -
$ su - ## Note the hyphen - it's required
Write the Slackware Installer to the Micro SD card
Check what block devices are present
Prior to inserting the Micro SD Card into the USB adapter, we need to see what's already present within the OS so that we can easily locate our Micro SD card:
# lsblk -d NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS sda 8:0 0 465.8G 0 disk
As you can see, this Host Computer there is a single storage device - sda.
Insert the Micro SD card into your USB Card Reader and connect the adapter to a free USB port on the Host Computer
Run lsblk again:
# lsblk -d NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS sda 8:0 0 465.8G 0 disk sdc 8:32 1 58G 0 disk sdd 8:48 1 0B 0 disk
As you can see, sdc is 58 GBytes in size. This is the Micro SD card (in this example, it's labeled as '64GB' on the exterior of Micro SD card).
If your Micro SD card has existing partitions, you will not see them surfaced in this list - use lsblk -b to view them.
Write the Slackware Installer to the Micro SD card
Enter the directory into which the Slackware assets were downloaded previously:
# cd ~mozes/slackware ## Substitute with the path you noted earlier # xzcat slkaio.img.xz | dd status=progress bs=4M iflag=fullblock of=/dev/XXX ## Substitute/dev/XXX with the correct block device # sync
Remove the MicroSD card from the Host Computer
You may now disconnect the USB adapter/remove the Micro SD card from the Host Computer.
Logout from the root user
We no longer need to use the Host Computer, so you can logout of the root shell.
# logout
