Raspberry Pi – Raspbian post install tasks

The Raspbian Install process is fairly well documented using the Raspbian Installer. This is just to document common tasks after the stock install.

Install base utils

apt-get install sudo vim ntpdate git-core binutils make gcc ca-certificates rpi-update

Allow non-root user account access to ‘sudo’

adduser USERNAME sudo
For those Ubuntu users there is no ‘admin’ group in Raspbian (Debian Wheezy).

NTP time update

sudo rm /etc/localtime
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime
sudo ntpdate -u au.pool.ntp.org

Probably best to choose an NTP Server closest to your location or provided by your ISP

Firmware upgrade

EDIT (2014-03-31): rpi-update is now part of the Raspbian repositories and can be installed via apt-get install rpi-update (I have added this to the above line).

Note: unless you want the latest firmware this is not a necessary step as apt-get will update the firmware to the latest stable release.

Using Hexxeh updater.

Install dependencies

wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update && sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update
sudo rpi-update

Install WiringPi

Thanks to the excellent work of Gordon Henderson (https://projects.drogon.net/raspberry-pi/wiringpi/) this is a C-based program to read/write to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins.

cd /usr/share
git clone git://git.drogon.net/wiringPi
cd wiringPi
git pull origin
./build

Output:

wiringPi Build script
=====================

The wiringPi I2C helper libraries will not be built.

WiringPi library
[UnInstall]
[Compile] wiringPi.c
[Compile] wiringPiFace.c
[Compile] wiringSerial.c
[Compile] wiringShift.c
[Compile] gertboard.c
[Compile] piNes.c
[Compile] lcd.c
[Compile] piHiPri.c
[Compile] piThread.c
[Compile] wiringPiSPI.c
[Compile] softPwm.c
[Compile] softServo.c
[Compile] softTone.c
[Link (Dynamic)]
[Install]

GPIO Utility
[Compile] gpio.c
[Link]
[Install]

All Done.

Testing the install

gpio readall

Output:

+----------+------+--------+------+-------+
| wiringPi | GPIO | Name   | Mode | Value |
+----------+------+--------+------+-------+
|      0   |  17  | GPIO 0 | IN   | Low   |
|      1   |  18  | GPIO 1 | IN   | Low   |
|      2   |  21  | GPIO 2 | IN   | Low   |
|      3   |  22  | GPIO 3 | IN   | Low   |
|      4   |  23  | GPIO 4 | IN   | Low   |
|      5   |  24  | GPIO 5 | IN   | Low   |
|      6   |  25  | GPIO 6 | IN   | Low   |
|      7   |   4  | GPIO 7 | IN   | Low   |
|      8   |   0  | SDA    | ALT0 | High  |
|      9   |   1  | SCL    | ALT0 | High  |
|     10   |   8  | CE0    | ALT0 | High  |
|     11   |   7  | CE1    | ALT0 | High  |
|     12   |  10  | MOSI   | ALT0 | Low   |
|     13   |   9  | MISO   | ALT0 | Low   |
|     14   |  11  | SCLK   | ALT0 | Low   |
|     15   |  14  | TxD    | ALT0 | High  |
|     16   |  15  | RxD    | ALT0 | High  |
+----------+------+--------+------+-------+