Talk:RPi Easy SD Card Setup

Page restructuring / update
I have decided to restructure the page, as I found it difficult to work out which tools to use; I want to make it easier for those unfamiliar with this type of activity. I hope that I have got things correct, but I cannot test all of the options. I'll do my best! SimonSmall (talk) 11:02, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Resizing the SD card
I can resize the partition, but not use it. Running the command

sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

gives me an error "Permission denied to resize the filesystem". Tried several things and I can't see how this can be done on an SD card that is being used to run the pi. Can someone help?

Copying the image to an SD Card on Windows if first option isn't successful
--Kerbik 23:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC) I hope that this will help someone :) (I didn't test this created SDcard on Pi, yet because I still doesn't have it in my hands :

--Radek 21:03, 18 May 2012 (UTC) Yes it works :)

Question about deleting the swap partition
Steps 4 and 6 under section "Copying an image to the SD Card in Linux (command line)" assume that the OS will automount the USB SDCard reader. This is not the case with the current release of Debian that's listed on the RPi downloads page. (debian6-19-04-2012) Using the df command with this release does not provide the user with the needed information. I do not (yet) know enough about Linux to provide easy, more reliable instructions. I was able to determine the correct device name by using "tail -f /var/log/messages" and watching for any mention of "sda" or similar while plugging/unplugging the USB SDCard reader. --GG Crew 20:33, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The steps currently listed under Manually resizing the SD card on Raspberry Pi instruct the user to delete the swap partition (in order to expand the main partition), but never recreate a new swap partition. For a device as limited on RAM as the RPi, this does not seem like a good idea. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me can update the directions, or explain why we don't need a swap partition. --GG Crew 07:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Having swap space on SSD/Flash isn't a good idea except for testing purposes. Prolonged swapping reduces the MTBF of the unit dramatically. If you're going to go to the trouble of adjusting partitions, it isn't unreasonable to move any needed swap space to some other (safer, or sacrificial) device. Gus3 14:37, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect MacOSX drive name
Believe (on a macBook pro, running 10.6.8 with a built in SD card reader) it's /dev/diskN not /dev/rdiskN ? Also should we have a further firm warning about getting this command right..

Incorrect eject command in MacOSX
I had to use "diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s1" instead of "diskutil eject /dev/disk1s1" as the latter removed /dev/rdisk1 from the machine. I was using an external USB SD card reader/writer if that makes any difference.

Don't need Apple menu in in MacOSX Mountain Lion
At least under Mountain Lion, if you use the Disk Utility (recommended in the semi-graphical method for unmounting the partition), and verify the partition before unmounting, it will give you the BSD name (in my case /dev/disk1s1), saving a step.

RasPiWrite
Original URL of http://exaviorn.com/raspiwrite/ was throwing 500s, so changed to github link.

--Finnaldo (a noob) 20 Apr 2013: The raspiwrite script has basic errors that prevent it from working, many people have tried pushing fixes in the last nine months but there has been no activity. The wiki should either drop the link or at least warn about it, but I'm too noob to want to touch it ;)

Reference section blues
The reference section seems to be messed up (also in the 2012-11-24 version). --Mortense (talk) 19:10, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The Mediawiki software was recently upgraded to 1.20.1. which seems to have affected some templates. Wmat now seems to have fixed it SimonSmall (talk) 10:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Copying the image to an SD Card in Linux (command line)
--TheLancashireman 00:26 2013-03-14 CET Is step 11 necessary? The Pi filesystem shouldn't be mounted at this point. Even if it was, umount handles everything, so a sync shouldn't be needed.

Incorrect argument to dd on osx
dd will only except bs=1m not bs=1M on OS X 10.6 and 10,7, and probably earlier.

"SD/USB/HDD EASY SET UP"
should i change title and addding a new section, for easy hdd/usb sd card setup tutorial using the same method on this page. or should i create a new page for external storage instalation?
 * Changing the title of the page might break external links. The page is part of the beginners section; the SD card if a necessary part of booting the Pi and a significant number of people have problems with booting it. As the USB / HDD storage is not a necessity initially, but is quite likely to be useful later, I think it would be better to be a separate page. You could also look at this USB drive page. SimonSmall (talk) 19:55, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

NOOBS Instructions
I have just added instructions for Installing via NOOBS. Feel free to update them (I only know Windows - most of it was based on the Quick-Start PDF Page 3)

Crazyskeggy (talk) 12:22, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

dd is for wusses
While dd certainly has its uses, it is not necessary for writing an image to a flash device. You can simply cat the image, thusly: cat [image file] > /dev/[device] Or you can skip a step, and just decompress the image straight to the SD card: unzip -p [compressed image] > /dev/[device] If you want a progress indicator, install pv on your computer. Then you can: unzip -p [compressed image] | pv > /dev/[device] I would add these suggestions to the main page, but I don't know if my command line minimalism would be appreciated by all.

--Dovregubben (talk) 20:31, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Misinformation for OS X users
For OS X users, the information on this page is badly out-of-date, and a terrific waste of time. Here's why:

For OS X users, this page is only mis-information, and will result in the loss of OS X users over time. Please either fix it, or delete it - this is crap.
 * 1)  The last edit on this Discussion page is nearly two years old as of today
 * 2)  I am using 10.10.5 ver of OS X
 * 3)  All of the "gui tools" described here (pi Filler, ApplePi-Baker, and PiWriter - both versions) do not work.
 * 4)  When they fail, there is no feedback as to why. My guess is that their authors are not well-informed.
 * 5)  The *ONLY* reliable way to write an .img file to an SD card is using the command-line tools (e.g. dd)

--Glimpse (talk) 10:17, 8 October 2015 (PDT)