RPi Beginners

Back to the R-Pi Hub

 If you are looking for a fast step-for-step approach to get started, have look at RPi Hardware Basic Setup.

This is the "community" beginners guide for Raspberry Pi's ARM based ultra-low-cost (~15GBP or 25USD) Linux computer for teaching computer programming to children. If something doesn't work or isn't covered in these guides, please feel free to ask on the Forum. But before you ask there, make sure you read the FAQs.

Please note that the Raspberry Pi isn't released yet - this page is a community work in progress in preparation for the launch.

This page is based on BeagleBoardBeginners and lots of this material applies to BeagleBoard and not to Raspberry Pi. Specifically, most Raspberry Pi users do not have access to a serial port (it's on the GPIOs but you need a board or cable to convert 3.3V UART signals to RS-232 or USB) so the serial port information doesn't usually apply. Also, many Raspberry Pi users will buy pre-programmed SD cards so they do not need to go through the process of partitioning and loading the SD card. We expect that once Raspberry Pi boards become generally available helpful volunteers will update this page to match Raspberry Pi, or if there is better information available elsewhere helpful volunteers will provide pointers to that information.

So I got this little board, what do I do now?

=Finding hardware and setting up= Main article: see RPi Hardware Basic Setup

You'll need a preloaded SD card (or make your own), USB keyboard, TV/Monitor (with HDMI/DVI/Composite/SCART input), and power supply (USB charger or a USB port from a powered USB Hub or another computer).

You'll likely also want a USB mouse, a case, and a USB Hub (a necessity for Model A). A powered USB Hub will reduce the demand on the RPi. To connect to the Internet, you'll need either an Ethernet/LAN cable (Model B) or a USB WiFi adaptor (either model).

When setting up, it is advisable to connect the power after everything else is ready. See RPi_Hardware_Basic_Setup.

=Serial connection= The Serial Port is a simple and uncomplicated method to connect to the Raspberry Pi. The communication depends on byte wise data transmission, is easy to setup and is generally available even before boot time.

First interaction with the board
Connect the serial cable to the COM port in the Raspberry Pi, and connect the other end to the COM port or USB Serial Adapter in the computer.

How please? I'm led to believe it's wired at the board end, so needs an accessible 9?? pin male|female 232 connector, then some sort of serial to usb dongle. Any more information on this please?

Next is this the preferred way to get low level access to the board, or using the usb for kbd and hdmi for screen?

Serial Parameters
The following parameters are needed to connect to the Raspberry. All parameters except Port_Name and Speed are default values and may not need to be set.
 * Port_Name: Linux automatically assigns different names for different types of serial connectors. Choose your option:
 * Standard Serial Port: ttyS0 ... ttySn
 * USB Serial Port Adapter: ttyUSB0 ... ttyUSBn
 * Speed: 115200
 * Bits: 8
 * Parity: None
 * Stop Bits: 1
 * Flow Control: None

The Serial Port is generally usable by the users in the group dialout. To add oneself to the group dialout the the following command needs to be executed with root privileges: $useradd -G {dialout} your_name

Super Easy Way Using GNU Screen
Enter the command below into a terminal window screen Port_Name 115200

Super Easy Way Using Minicom
Run minicom with the following parameters:

minicom -b 115200 -o -D Port_Name

Tedious Old-Fashioned Way Using Minicom
Another method to setup minicom is described in the Tincantools Minicom Tutorial

GUI method with GtkTerm
Start GtkTerm, select Configuration->Port and enter the values above in the labeled fields.

Windows Users
Windows Users above Windows XP must download putty or a comparable terminal program. Users of XP and below can choose between using putty and ''Hyperterminal. ''

First Dialog
If you get the prompt below, you are connected to the Raspberry Pi shell! prompt> #

First command you might want try is "help": prompt> # help

If you get some output, you are correctly connected to the Raspberry Pi! Congratulations!

=SD card setup=

Now we want to use an SD card to install some GNU/Linux distro in it and get more space for our stuff. You can use either an SD or SDHC card. In the latter case of course take care that your PC card reader also supports SDHC. Be aware that you are not dealing with an x86 processor, but instead a completely different architecture called ARM, so don't forget to install the ARM port for the distro you are planning to use.

(to be completed)

Formatting the SD card via the mkcard.txt script
(to be completed)


 * 1) Download mkcard.txt from ???.
 * 2)  x, Where x is the letter of the card.  You can find this by inserting your card and then running  .  You should see the messages about the device being mounted in the log.  Mine mounts as sdc.
 * 1)  x, Where x is the letter of the card.  You can find this by inserting your card and then running  .  You should see the messages about the device being mounted in the log.  Mine mounts as sdc.

Once run, your card should be formatted.

Formatting the SD card via fdisk "Expert mode"
First, lets clear the partition table:

================================================================================ $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb Command (m for help): o Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable. Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite) ================================================================================

Print card info:

================================================================================ Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdb: 128 MB, 128450560 bytes .... ================================================================================

Note card size in bytes. Needed later below.

Then go into "Expert mode":

================================================================================ Command (m for help): x ================================================================================

Now we want to set the geometry to 255 heads, 63 sectors and calculate the number of cylinders required for the particular SD/MMC card:

================================================================================ Expert command (m for help): h Number of heads (1-256, default 4): 255 Expert command (m for help): s Number of sectors (1-63, default 62): 63 Warning: setting sector offset for DOS compatiblity ================================================================================

NOTE: Be especially careful in the next step. First calculate the number of cylinders as follows:


 * B = Card size in bytes (you got it before, in the second step when you printed the info out)
 * C = Number of cylinders

C=B/255/63/512

When you get the number, you round it DOWN. Thus, if you got 108.8 you'll be using 108 cylinders.

================================================================================ Expert command (m for help): c Number of cylinders (1-1048576, default 1011): 15 ================================================================================

In this case 128MB card is used (reported as 128450560 bytes by fdisk above), thus 128450560 / 255 / 63 / 512 = 15.6 rounded down to 15 cylinders. Numbers there are 255 heads, 63 sectors, 512 bytes per sector.

So far so good, now we want to create two partitions. One for the boot image, one for our distro.

Create the FAT32 partition for booting and transferring files from Windows. Mark it as bootable.

================================================================================ Expert command (m for help): r Command (m for help): n Command action e  extended p  primary partition (1-4) p Partition number (1-4): 1 First cylinder (1-245, default 1): (press Enter) Using default value 1 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-245, default 245): +50 Command (m for help): t Selected partition 1 Hex code (type L to list codes): c Changed system type of partition 1 to c (W95 FAT32 (LBA)) Command (m for help): a Partition number (1-4): 1 ================================================================================

Create the Linux partition for the root file system.

================================================================================ Command (m for help): n Command action e  extended p  primary partition (1-4) p Partition number (1-4): 2 First cylinder (52-245, default 52): (press Enter) Using default value 52 Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (52-245, default 245):(press Enter) Using default value 245 ================================================================================

Print and save the new partition records.

================================================================================ Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdc: 2021 MB, 2021654528 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 245 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot     Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sdc1  *           1          51      409626    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sdc2             52         245     1558305   83  Linux Command (m for help): w The partition table has been altered! Calling ioctl to re-read partition table. WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot. WARNING: If you have created or modified any DOS 6.x partitions, please see the fdisk manual page for additional information. Syncing disks. ================================================================================

Now we've got both partitions, next step is formatting them.

NOTE: If the partitions (/dev/sdc1 and /dev/sdc2) does not exist, you should unplug the card and plug it back in. Linux will now be able to detect the new partitions.

================================================================================ $ sudo mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/sdc1 -n LABEL mkfs.msdos 2.11 (12 Mar 2005) $ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdc2 mke2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) 195072 inodes, 389576 blocks 19478 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=402653184 12 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 16256 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912 Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (8192 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: ================================================================================

All done!

NOTE: For convenience, you can add the -L option to the mkfs.ext3 command to assign a volume label to the new ext3 filesystem. If you do that, the new (automatic) mount point under /media when you insert that SD card into some Linux hosts will be based on that label. If there's no label, the new mount point will most likely be a long hex string, so assigning a label makes manual mounting on the host more convenient.

=Writing the image into the SDcard and finally booting GNU/Linux=

The easiest way to do this is to use PiCard. It even saves you from some hassles explained above. You will need your SD card + reader and a Linux pc to use PiCard. After that, just plug the card into the Raspberry.

Wire up your Raspberry Pi and power it up
See RPi_Hardware_Basic_Setup.

=SD Card Cloning/Backup= Note: Update these instructions if required once they've been tried From windows you can copy the full SD-Card by using Win32DiskImager (thanks to Bradburts & Gert from the forum).

Alternatively, you can use the following instructions as provided by Gert from the forum):

Note: Many built-in SD card readers do not work, so if you have problems use an external SD-USB adapter for this.

Required Software Setup
(This excutable can to write to your harddisk so exercise caution using it!) (That excutable refuses to write to your harddisk as it is named dd-removable As long as you use dd-removable.exe you can not lose your harddisk)
 * download a windows utility dd.exe from http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
 * rename it windd.exe
 * make a copy named dd-removable.exe
 * Connect an SD card to the computer
 * run "dd-removable –list"

Should give something like this: rawwrite dd for windows version 0.6beta3. Written by John Newbigin  This program is covered by terms of the GPL Version 2. NT Block Device Objects \\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 link to \\?\Device\Harddisk1\DR8 Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512 size is 4075290624 bytes This "\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0" is the part you need.

Reading an image from the SD Card
BEWARE: DO THIS WRONG AND YOU CAN LOSE YOUR HARDDISK!!!

Obviously, you can NOT use 'dd-removable' to read an image as that executable refuses to write to your harddisk (so extra care is required here as you use 'windd').

windd bs=1M if=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 of=THE_IMAGE_READ –size Your disk name ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 * To read an SD-card image from the SD-card use:

Copying an image to the SD Card
BEWARE: DO THIS WRONG AND YOU CAN LOSE YOUR HARDDISK!!!

dd-removable bs=1M if=THEIMAGE of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 Your disk name ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 * To copy an image named "THEIMAGE" to the SD-card do this:

= Software development/proving =

A supported platform for the Raspberry is Qt, which is already being worked on. C/C++ is supported through a gcc cross-compiling toolchain. (Which one ?)

Python is pushed forward by the foundation. (Status ??)

After compiling, using QEMU and a Linux VM would be one way of testing your apps. This also works on Windows. Search the forum for the readymade ARM images.

The choice of programming languages, IDEs and other tools ON the R-Pi is only determined by :

1) The operating system compatibility ( at the moment the specific Linux distro used) 2) The status of the respective ARM package repositories and their binary compatibility

3) The possibilty to build other software + its dependencies for the R-Pi from sources ( depends on C crosscompiler ???)

What kind of software development and testing loop has been proven effective please, from someone who'se been there and done it?

For me (and others hopefully) that would be very useful.

=Further reading=

The main Raspberry Pi resources are:


 * Raspberry Pi Foundation-maintained Raspberry Pi home
 * Raspberry Pi Foundation-maintained Raspberry Pi Forum
 * Community-maintained eLinux wiki (see wiki article overview for a list of existing articles)

An alternative startup guide for beginners can be found on h2g2: Introducing the Raspberry Pi

For more guides and projects involving the Raspberry Pi, see RaspberryPiBoardProjects.

=Thanks to=


 * Nabax, _vlad, jkridner, ds2 and the other BeagleBoard wiki contributors on elinux.org for an excellent BeagleBoardBeginners resource, which we used as the template for this page.