Raspberry Pi Setup

There are a number of different Linux distributions that support the Raspberry Pi; Debian, Ubuntu MATE, and Raspbian. The differences between them are relatively minor, and which you use is largely a matter of preference.

I use the Raspbian Stretch Lite distribution on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+.

The following notes are current as of the April 2018 version.

Configuration

For emergency access to the Raspberry Pi, and access when I'm on the move, I enable the serial console:

echo enable_uart=1 | sudo tee /boot/config.txt

I also enable the SSH server, but restrict it to not allow access via passwords:

sudo sed -i -e '/PasswordAuthentication /{s/^#//;s/ yes/ no/}' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

Swap

The Raspberry Pi doesn't have much memory, so it's worth adding some extra swap space for big jobs like compiling a toolchain.

sudo sed -i -e '/CONF_SWAPSIZE=/s/=.*/=2048/}' /etc/dphys-swapfile
sudo systemctl restart dphys-swapfile

Extra packages

There's a few extra packages it always pays to have installed:

sudo apt-get install git rsync screen wiringpi

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