Flashing an SD Card

After a successful build, the output images are in:

build/tmp/deploy/images/<machine>/

Image Formats

Depending on the BSP version, the generated image may have different extensions:

Extension	Description
`.wic.zst`	Compressed with Zstandard (most recent)
`.wic.gz`	Compressed with gzip
`.wic.bz2`	Compressed with bzip2
`.wic`	Uncompressed WIC image
`.raw`	Raw disk image
`.sdcard`	Legacy format (older BSP releases)

Check what's present in the deploy directory:

ls -lh build/tmp/deploy/images/<machine>/

Selecting the wrong device will permanently destroy data

Always verify the device path before running dd.

lsblk

Insert the SD card and run lsblk again — the new device is your SD card.

sda      232G   disk    ← host disk, do not touch
sdb       32G   disk    ← SD card
└─sdb1    32G   part

Use the disk device (e.g. /dev/sdb), not a partition (not /dev/sdb1).

.wic.zst.wic.gz.wic.bz2.wic / .raw

zstdcat -cd <image>.wic.zst | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=10M status=progress && sync

gzip -dc <image>.wic.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=10M status=progress && sync

bzcat <image>.wic.bz2 | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=10M status=progress && sync

sudo dd if=<image>.wic of=/dev/sdX bs=10M status=progress && sync

Replace /dev/sdX with your actual SD card device.

Graphical alternative

BalenaEtcher handles all compressed formats automatically.
Download from balena.io/etcher.