Installing Raspian on a Raspberry Pi

Set-up: some first steps

So, here are a few of my first steps:

• Get connected to my wireless network -- I use a wireless connection. For that, I have a USB wireless adapter plugged into my Raspberry Pi. On the LXDE desktop, there is a network icon in the panel at the top right of my screen. I clicked on it, waited a few seconds, then selected the network I wanted to connect to, and since it's secured, typed in its password. Now I'm connected, and I can ping machines in my local network (LAN) and the outside world, visit Web sites in my browser, etc.

  For more information about Raspberry WiFi setup, see: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/README.md

  There are actually two wireless networks in my house: the main one that is connected to my modem and the other that is positioned in the middle of our house and configured as a repeater so that we get a better signal at the Roku device connected to our TV at the other end of the house. Both of these routers run DD-WRT: "DD-WRT is a Linux based alternative OpenSource firmware suitable for a great variety of WLAN routers and embedded systems." See: http://dd-wrt.com/site/.

• Use raspi-config to set a few things:

  • Expanded the file system -- Not sure what effect this has.
  • Changed my password -- The default user is "pi" and the default password is "raspberry".
  • Changed the host name (under Advanced Options)
  • Enabled SSH server (under Advanced Options).
  • Change the keyboard from a British layout to a U.S. one (under Internationalization)

• Upgrade Raspian/Linux:

  $ sudo aptitude update
  $ sudo aptitude full-upgrade
  

• Install a few software packages that I use:

  $ sudo aptitude install vim tmux byobu
  

  You can always install other packages later of course.

  Also note that there is a visual tool for installing packages, if you prefer that over aptitude or apt-get. I found it under:

  Desktop Menu --> Preferences --> Add / Remove Software
  

• Change the name and the home directory of the default user -- I typically use "dkuhlman" as my user name. But, the default user name is pi. Here is how I changed that:

  1. In raspi-config, change the "Boot Options" to "Console".

  2. Re-boot.

  3. You should now be looking at a text console. Log on if necessary. Then, run the following:

     $ exec sudo -s
     $ cd /
     $ sudo usermod -l new_user_name -d /home/new_user_name -m pi
     

     If your results are the same as mine, you will get a message to the effect that the directory is in use by process number nnn. So, you will need to kill that process:

     $ kill nnn
     

     And, substitute the process number reported in the error message.

  4. After the usermod command succeeds, check to ensure that the home directory was moved:

     $ ls /home
     

  5. You should now be able to log on with your new user name and the same password (the one formerly used by user pi):

     $ sudo shutdown -r now
     

• Audio and HDMI -- My Raspberry Pi is connected to a TV set via HDMI. (This is the Raspberry Pi that is connected to my keyboard and mouse.) I was not getting any sound and I wanted to listen to Emmy Lou Harris singing "Two more bottles of wine" at http://youtube.com.

  The first thing to try is to use raspi-config -- Under "Advanced Options", I set Audio to HDMI. But for me, that seemed to have no effect.

  So, I uncommented this line in /boot/config.txt:

  # uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
  # DMT (computer monitor) modes
  hdmi_drive=2
  

  You can find more information about this kind of configuration here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/audio-config.md

Configuration for my own work

The following steps are ones that I follow because I've installed Raspian Linux several times, and so, I have some handy stuff that I bring along with me each time:

1. Create a mount point so that I can mount and access the file system of another machine on my (wireless) network:

   $ sudo mkdir /crow-a1
   

2. Mount the remote file system:

   $ sudo mount -t nfs -v crow:/home/dkuhlman/a1 /crow-a1
   

   Note that you may need to install the NFS server software on the remote machine in order to do the above:

   $ sudo aptitude install nfs-kernel-server
   

   At least that's what I think I did. It was quite a while ago that I did that.

   And, you will want to add a line to /etc/exports on the remote machine. The one I added looked like this:

   /home/dkuhlman/a1     192.168.0.1/24(rw,no_root_squash,async)
   

Now you should be able to use that shared directory to transfer files to and from the Raspberry Pi. For example, from my remote machine to the Raspberry Pi, I can do the following on the remote machine:

$ zip some-stuff.zip stuff/*
$ cp some-stuff.zip ~/a1

And, then on the Raspberry Pi, I'll do:

$ cp /crow-a1/some-stuff.zip .
$ unzip -l some-stuff.zip        # just checking
$ unzip some-stuff.zip           # really unroll the file's contents

For example, I have a bin directory under my home directory that contains utilities that I've implemented and collected over time. I can archive that bin directory, then unroll it on the Raspberry Pi. If your $HOME/bin is not already on your path, you can add that to your .profile, for example:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

See the following for more on where to add such things: http://superuser.com/questions/183870/difference-between-bashrc-and-bash-profile/183980#183980