nrfutil running on RPI 4

RE: nrfutil running on RPI 4

drollinger — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 08:56:34 GMT

Your inference is spot on, thank you! Okay.

RE: nrfutil running on RPI 4

Einar Thorsrud — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 08:51:51 GMT

Hi,

These are different things. nrfutil is a PC side tool that has different purposes, one of which is to perform DFU (over different transports, and using both the old nRF DFU protocol and SMP similar to MCUmgr), while MCUboot is a bootloader.

But you did perhaps mean MCUmgr and not MCUboot? If so, these are also very different tools, but overlap in the capability to perform DFU over SMP (MCUmgr can also do other data transfer over SMP). You can see practical examples of using MCUmgr in the documentation for the SMP Server Sample.

RE: nrfutil running on RPI 4

drollinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:55:03 GMT

This begs the question: Is there anything the nrfutil can do that cant be done with the MCUboot?

RE: nrfutil running on RPI 4

drollinger — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:26:52 GMT

Thank you, just to be redundant: the work I have started is complete. The Zephyr development runs on a RPi(Bookworm), compiles MCUboot, programs the nRF52840 USB dongle over SWD, compiles blinky for MCUboot, and MCUboot programs the blinky. Terse document describing some of process here

RE: nrfutil running on RPI 4

Einar Thorsrud — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:12:09 GMT

Hi Cy,

[quote user=""]

Is there any official or planned support for running nRF Util on ARM Linux (Raspberry Pi) in 2026 or later?
If not, are there recommended workarounds (e.g., Docker, QEMU, or specific build instructions for the latest version)?

[/quote]

As you write nrfutil is not supported on ARM64 on Linux, and there is no official workaround. I cannot comment on potential future plans, but you can contact nordic sales regarding that.

[quote user=""]For Zephyr + MCUboot projects on nRF52840, is mcumgr the preferred/recommended DFU tool on ARM hosts like Raspberry Pi? (It seems lightweight and already works well in our setup.)[/quote]

Yes, that is the approach I would recommend.

[quote user=""]Any tips for USB DFU specifically with the nRF52840 Dongle from an ARM host?[/quote]

There are no officially supported solutions here either. There has been some work by other parties, such as rpi-nrfutil, but I have not experience with it.