Raspberry Pi: Prepare Raspbian

Note: This assumes the previous how-to on preparing the SD card has been covered and Raspbian is already 'installed' on the SD card.

• Simply insert the SD card and power up
  • It will take some time, but a Linux Desktop will appear on screen.
• Initial Configuration:
  • locale set to US
  • timezone changed to Asia/Kuala_Lumpur
  • keyboard layout set to US (English)
• Run update sudo apt update and upgrade sudo apt upgrade if necessary
  • if error occurs, most probably problem with the mirror (change to another mirror)

• Get kernel headers (compiling loadable kernel module)
  • sudo apt install raspberrypi-kernel-headers
• To be able to compile codes that require sqlite
  • sudo apt install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
• To have web server with php
  • sudo apt install apache2 php php-cgi libapache2-mod-php php-sqlite3
  • edit php.ini to enable pdo support
  • enable mod_rewrite (create link in mods-enabled from mods_available)
    • look for rewrite
  • default path for web is /var/www/html
• I also want screen and ntfs-3g (ntfs with r/w)
  • sudo apt install screen ntfs-3g

This is about doing GUI development while running Raspbian on Pi itself.

• install glade (will also get gtk library)
  • sudo apt install glade

• to access camera, load the Video4Linux kernel module
  • sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2
  • not needed if you enabled camera using Configuration Page
• install ffmpeg stuffs
  • sudo apt install libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev
• if going for GTK
  • sudo apt install libgtk2.0-dev
• if going for SDL
  • sudo apt install libsdl1.2-dev

• Get my source codes (e.g. download everything @/home/pi/Work)

  mkdir -pv /home/pi/Work && cd /home/pi/Work
  git clone git://github.com/azman/my1codelib.git
  git clone git://github.com/azman/my1webapp.git
  git clone git://github.com/azman/my1apisrv.git
  git clone git://github.com/azman/my1linuxpi.git
  git clone git://github.com/azman/my1termu.git
  git clone git://github.com/my1matrix/my1goose.git

• Obviously, we need git for this
  • sudo apt install git

To upgrade locally installed sofware:

• Update apt database

  $ sudo apt update

• Upgrade local packages

  $ sudo apt upgrade

If packages got held/kept back, simply reinstall those packages:

• Reinstall

  $ sudo apt install --reinstall

To do an upgrade (e.g. I did this to upgrade stretch to buster):

• Modify /etc/apt/sources.list and replace the release codenames (e.g. change stretch to buster)
  • do the same for /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list
• Update package list

  $ sudo apt update

• Upgrade distribution

  $ sudo apt dist-upgrade

• Do house cleaning

  $ sudo apt autoremove
  $ sudo apt clean

That should do it!

Note: This is already in the default install.

To make Pi hostname visible on local network, get avahi-daemon (default install)

• sudo apt install avahi-daemon
• this is part of Bonjour/Rendezvous/ZeroConf multicast DNS (aka mDNS) services
• change hostname as desired
  • use raspi-configuration tool
• clients need to support mDNS as well:
  • windows need this
  • linux require avahi (for slackers, slackbuilds.org got this)