Raspberry Pi Basic Config

This page is my reference for basic config of a Raspberry Pi image.

Based on:

The latest version of Raspbian can always be found at www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

From Windows:

Download and extract the Raspberry Pi operating system;
Download and extract the Win32DiskImager software, win32diskimager-binary.zip (currently version 0.6);
Write Raspbian to the SD card (in Windows Vista, 7 and 8 it is recommended that you right-click win32diskimager.exe and choose “Run as administrator”).

On the Raspberry Pi:

Booting Raspberry Pi for the first time

On first boot you will come to the Raspi-config window.
Timezone and locale is GMT by default
Check ssh is enabled
Select expand_rootfs and say ‘yes’ to a reboot

The Raspberry Pi will reboot and you will see the login prompt:

User: pi Pwd: raspberry

Start the GUI with startx

Fix the ip address:

cd /etc/network
sudo nano interfaces

replace the line “iface eth0 inet dhcp” with

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.xxx.xxx
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.xxx.1

Also check /etc/resolv.conf and check it has a nameserver entry (probably pointing at your default gateway) or direct to your ISP name servers.

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 192.168.xxx.1

…if the file has the following:
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND — YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN

then it is using resolvconf program which should instead be configured using the following two lines in /etc/network/interfaces

dns-nameservers
dns-search

Reboot:

sudo reboot

Check using ifconfig to confirm static ip address.

Run X Server from a Linux machine:

ssh -X <ip address of Rpi> -l <username on Rpi>

Connecting in this way gives a terminal where any graphical program run will be presented on the connecting machine (running the X server) e.g. midori will run the Pi’s browser, displayed on the remote machine.

Install VNC Server on the Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

…run the VNC Server on the Pi…

vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x800 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565:

(:1 is the port on which the server is running)

This will start the VNC server process on the Pi. What this means is that it will start a virtual X session (a virtual instance of the Raspberry Pi GUI) on your Pi, in a very similar way to when you run startx when your Pi is connected to a display. When you VNC into your Pi you will be connecting to this X session.

…then connect to the Pi with your VNC client of choice e.g. xvnc4viewer

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