Minimal Raspbian Installation

Goal: Setup a minimal Raspbian setup without bloat. This was used before by starting with a minibian installation, but has been superseded by the availability of Raspbian lite images.

Setting up SD Card

• Download Raspbian Lite image: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
• unzip image:

unzip 2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-lite.zip

• Put image on SD Card (ADJUST /dev/sdX target to the correct block device!):
• Stick SD Card in (duh)

dd bs=4M if=2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-lite.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress
OR IF YOU HAVE OLD DD
dd bs=4M if=2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-lite.img | pv | dd bs=4M of=/dev/sdX

Connecting to the Pi

By default Raspbian will get an IP on ethernet.

You do not have a screen

• Don't remove the SD card from computer
• Refresh partition table (use partprobe on Linux, on FreeBSD it should not be needed, and no idea for the rest)
• mount the first partition from the SD card (adjust paths!):

sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/stuff              # Linux
sudo mount -t msdosfs /dev/da2s1 /media/stuff  # FreeBSD

• Create an empty file called ssh inside /media/stuff/:

sudo touch /media/stuff/ssh

• Unmount the partition

sudo umount /media/stuff

• Insert SD, Power the RPi, wait for crazy blinking to stop
• Figure out what is your RPi IP address (adjust mask to reflect own network), using one of these methods:

nmap -sP 192.168.1.1-255    # adjust network mask, the RPi's default name is raspberrypi
arp -na | grep -i b8:27:eb  # list arp entries, filter MAC addresses of RPi vendor (up to RPi3 included)
arp -na | grep -i dc:a6:32  # list arp entries, filter MAC addresses of RPi vendor (RPi4 and more)

• ssh in RPi (passwd is raspberry)

ssh pi@192.168.1.XXX

• CHANGE PASSWORD THANKS

passwd

You have a screen and keyboard

• Insert SD, Power the RPi, the IP will is displayed in the console at the end of the boot process. However you need to enable sshd first.
• log into the console with pi:raspberry
• start raspi-config tool

sudo raspi-config

• In interfacing options, enable SSH
• Exit raspi-config
• If you did not take note of the IP yet, you can always do:

ifconfig eth0 | grep inet

• ssh in RPi (passwd is raspberry)

ssh pi@192.168.1.XXX

• CHANGE PASSWORD THANKS

passwd

Base system

All this stuff as root:

• flavouring

echo "BMO" > /etc/hostname
hostname -F /etc/hostname

• don't bloat the system

echo -e 'APT::Install-Recommends "0";\nAPT::Install-Suggests "0";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/90norecommend

• update system

apt update
apt upgrade

• update to latest kernel (nowadays discouraged, only use if you need a pre-release kernel)

apt install rpi-update
rpi-update
reboot

• what time is it

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Comfy environment (optional)

Now you can install all your comfy l33t command line tools and whatnot, fav editors, etc. This is just an example of what I (ugrnm) always put on top of my pi, YMMV:

• comfy tools and stuff

ln -s /usr/bin/vim.tiny /usr/bin/vim
apt install tmux tcsh git
chsh -s /bin/tcsh root

• create /root/.tcshrc

if ($?prompt) then
      set prompt = "%N@%m:%~ %# "
      set promptchars = "%#"
      set filec
      set history = 1000
      set savehist = (1000 merge)
      set autolist = ambiguous
      set autoexpand
      set autorehash
      if ( $?tcsh ) then
              bindkey "^W" backward-delete-word
              bindkey -k up history-search-backward
              bindkey -k down history-search-forward
      endif
endif

• logout and log back in

THIS IS IT!

Well done, you now have a minimal RPi installation, the guideline stops here, anything past this point is just a matter of what the RPi will be used for.