Raspberry Pi OS • Trouble getting containerd's nerdctl working on Pi Zero W

Hi all,

Just registered, first post on the forum. I've been using Pis for years, but have finally hit a problem I can't solve on my own.

I want to use my Pi Zero W to run a bit of software headless that's deployable as a container whose image is regularly published to registries. Because this is a low-power bit of kit, I'm trying to do this in as lightweight a way as possible. So I'm not using Docker with everything that comes with that I don't need. Instead I'd like to use containerd. This requires several related bits of software to round out the solution:

• containerd itself

• runc or crun (for low-level container management)

• nerdctl (CLI to interact with containerd)

• CNI Plugins (to enable containers to interact with the Pi's network)

• iptables

• rootlesskit (for running containers which don't have root access)

I tried the above setup on my Pi 3 B, and got it working fine. 3 of that list of 5 are available as Debian packages, so I've had no difficulty installing those. But two of them don't, and that's where the trouble has started on my Pi Zero.

nerdctl and the CNI plugins are published only as binaries (nerdctl-2.1.3-linux-arm-v7.tar.gz and cni-plugins-linux-arm-v1.7.1.tgz) from their respective GitHub repos (https://github.com/containerd/nerdctl/r ... tag/v2.1.3 and https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins/releases). I'm pretty sure these are 32-bit binaries, aligning with the OS installed (Raspberry Pi OS Lite).

When I extract them and attempt to use nerdctl to run a container, I get an "Illegal operation" error. This suggests to me that the binary has not been compiled for the Pi Zero's armv6 architecture (although I'm not certain - this is where my knowledge begins to peter out).

My questions:

• Is this likely the case, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

• If so, is it worth going to the effort of attempting to compile those two projects for the Pi Zero's processor architecture?

• If it is, then what should I be aware of to minimise the time spent floundering in ignorance?

Thank you in advance, o Pi community!

Statistics: Posted by UrgeToSplurge — Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:38 pm

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