A Better way to install Golang (Go) on Raspberry Pi

26 comments by readers

1. Hi, i was trying to install golang on my RPI4, but get stucked on the step
   $ go version
   it gives me
   bash: /usr/local/go/bin/go: No such file or directory
   even though it does exist.
   i can get the go version using sudo, but it does not seems to be a correct behaviour.
   Any suggestion?

   1. Assuming you’ve added PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
to your ~/.profile. This is probably because the files in /usr/local/go/bin belong to root:wheel. In my case, I don’t use the default pi user for my access, but use a username that I created that have the sudo group access. What you could try is to add the username that you are using to the sudo group:

      sudo usermod -a -G sudo username
      

      Remember to replace the username with the user that you are using for accessing the RPI.

   2. im sure you sorted this out long ago (pun intended)
      /usr/local/go/bin/
      not “/usr/local/go/bin/go” remove “go” at the end of the path

   3. In my case error was due to running on Jetson Nano in which case the architecture needs to be “arm64” and not “armv6l”. Thanks for the article.

   4. You installed the wrong version!
      You must install the version for the ARM processor.
      https://golang.org/dl/
      Example:
      go1.17.2.linux-armv6l.tar.gz

2. When I try to run go1.13.1 on my Raspi4 I get the following error: “bash: /usr/local/go/bin/go: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error”

   I installed go 1.11.x on my Raspi3 and that seems to run OK. It looks like Go has not been updated to Raspi4 yet.

   Is any one else having this problem?

   Thanks.

   1. I have an rpi 4 and just installed https://dl.google.com/go/go1.13.3.linux-armv6l.tar.gz without issue following the directions above.

3. I am running a Pi2 with raspian lite. I am not clear if these instructions would work on Pi1,2,3,or 4 ?

   1. I used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi to determine I have ARMV7 most likely.
      I installed sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.14.2.linux-armv6l.tar.gz from above table.
      I got: $ go version
      go version go1.14.2 linux/arm
      Thank you very much, works as advertised if you read carefully.

4. Nice simple talk through, why cant everyone make it this easy?

5. Here is an easier way to get the very latest version…
   https://d4v3y0rk.com/golang-on-rpi-easiest/

   1. Dave, nice little shell script.

   2. Dave, your script will get rc versions. In looking at fixing that I realized I could simplify the grep/awk/sed combos considerably. I also realized I could probably make the whole thing into a one liner if I used curl -L and then piped the output of that into sudo tar -xzC /usr/local

      So a one liner way to get the latest go installed into /usr/local/go is

      curl -L https://golang.org/dl/$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/golang/go/git/matching-refs/tags/go | grep '/ref' | sed -e '/beta/ d' -e '/rc/ d' -e 's/.*\(go[0-9.]*\).*/\1/' | tail -1).linux-armv6l.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzC /usr/local
      

6. I would like to add….

   If you installed a 64 bit OS (e.g. Ubuntu Server 64bit) you need to download the 64 bit code !!!

   go1.14.6.linux-arm64.tar.gz

   instead of

   go1.14.6.linux-armv6l.tar.gz

   1. Only if the Pi has the 64-bit CPU architecture. My Pi 4 still has quad ARMv7s, which are still 32-bit.

      1. No. Raspberry Pi 4 has a Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC, but for backward compatibility reason, Raspberry Pi OS is still operated at 32-bit architecture.

7. If you have a Pi 4, I would strongly recommend coding in Go with Visual Studio Code. It’ s smart about installing gotools and the Intellisense support makes life a lot easier. The Pi 4 is easily beefy enough to run it. It also really pays to read the documentation on current best coding practices for writing golang code mentioned in the article, *especially* if you have been using Go prior to the module system which became the default with v1.13 (I started with Go v1.6 and had to unlearn a lot of stuff).

8. To have a cleaner screen, u can use “-sS” parameter with curl:

   export GOLANG="$(curl -sS https://golang.org/dl/|grep armv6l|grep -v beta|head -1|awk -F\> {'print $3'}|awk -F\< {'print $1'})"
   

9. Just wanted to let you know that your script now grabs the macOS arm package because the search variable isnt specific enough. You have to make it linux-armv6l (or linux-arm64 if you are using a Pi4 with a 64bit OS).

   Thanks for the tutorial!

   1. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve updated the script.

10. Here is a slightly better version of the script:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    
    set -e
    set -u
    set -x
    
    # download current version and extract it to /tmp/go
    export GOLANG="$(curl https://golang.org/dl/|grep linux-armv6l|grep -v beta|head -1|awk -F\> {'print $3'}|awk -F\< {'print $1'})"
    wget https://golang.org/dl/$GOLANG
    tar -C /tmp -xzf $GOLANG
    rm $GOLANG
    unset GOLANG
    
    # remove previous installation
    sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
    sudo mv /tmp/go /usr/local
    

    Here’s a quick breakdown of the changes:

    1) I’m setting the bash shell language explicitly & exiting when either a command fails or a variable is undefined (best practice), see https://kvz.io/bash-best-practices.html for more details.

    2) When I unzip, I write to /tmp directory instead of directly writing to the end destination. This allows for several things. If any failure happens while downloading or unzipping, I don’t blow away my current installation of go.

    Here&’s the line that changed:

    tar -C /tmp -xzf $GOLANG
    

    3) I’m automating the removal of the previous golang version and moving the new version from /tmp into it’s proper place.

11. Hi,

    thanks for the great script!

    I adopted some parts:

    – new URL to download go releases (go.dev/dl)
    – grep for linux-arm64
    – added “-sS” to curl

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    
    set -e
    set -u
    set -x
    
    # download current version and extract it to /tmp/go
    export GOLANG="$(curl -sS https://go.dev/dl/|grep linux-arm64|grep -v beta|head -1|awk -F\> {'print $3'}|awk -F\< {'print $1'})"
    wget https://go.dev/dl/$GOLANG
    tar -C /tmp -xzf $GOLANG
    rm $GOLANG
    unset GOLANG
    
    # remove previous installation
    sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
    sudo mv /tmp/go /usr/local
    

    Thanks,
    Thomas

12. Go’s download page has changed, the very handy script needs some tweaking to work with https://go.dev/

13. curl -s https://go.dev/dl/ | awk -F[\>\<] '/linux-armv6l/ && !/beta/ {print $5;exit}'
    

14. Thank you I can confirm this worked on a Raspberry Pi 1 B+ running the latest Raspbian as of 2022/10/31

15. If it pleases the court, I wish to enter into the record, the following exhibit:

    “`
    pi@rpi400:~ $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/arch
    aarch64
    “`
    This suggests a reliable way to create a single install script is to:
    “`
    target=”$(grep -q 64 /proc/sys/kernel/arch && echo linux-arm64 || echo linux-armv6l)”
    “`
    Then you can use the `$target` variable for your search/filter/grep.

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