Minimal Raspbian Buster Install

Published on May 13, 2020

In this tutorial, i will provide instructions to get a working install of Raspbian Buster for your Raspberry Pi starting with a minimal image. This tutorial covers:

  • Writing the image to SD Card
  • Localisation Options
  • WiFi Setup
  • SSH Logins
  • User Creation
  • Desktop Environment Installation

This tutorial assumes that you are comfortable with the terminal and are able to install applications, update the system and edit configuration files from the terminal.

Part 1: Getting Started

You will need to download the Raspbian Buster Lite image from raspberrypi.org or download the zip file from command line using wget.

wget https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest -O raspbian_lite.zip

Part 2: Write image to SD Card

NOTE: use of the dd (“disk destroyer” ahahah) can overwrite any partition on your machine. If you specify the wrong device in the instructions. Please be careful.

Locate SD card device and unmount

  • Run lslbk -p to see which devices are connected.
  • The device name will be something like /dev/mmcblk0 or /dev/sdX (X indicates a number).
  • If any partitions have been mounted, unmount them all using umount followed by the mount path.

Copying the image to SD card

Using the dd command, specify the input file if= argument with the image file and specify output file of= argument with the correct device for the SD card.

dd bs=4M if=raspbian_lite.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress conv=fsync
# In the case of zip file, just pipe the file to dd
unzip -p raspbian_lite.zip | dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Part 3: Initial Changes to Raspbian Buster Lite

After booting the RPi, the naked tty prompts the login. The default user name is pi and the password raspberry.

Localisation Options

The importance of setting the Localisation Options is to type correctly the special characters present in the Brazilian Portuguese language which is my mother language.

  1. Using sudo raspi-config, select Localisation Options > Change Keyboard Layout then select the proper layout, for me Generic 105-Key PC.
  2. While still in Localisation Options select Change Locale, and change the language, for me this was en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8.
  3. Before leaving, you should set the Time Zone and Wi-fi Country.

Setup WiFi

In order to setup WiFi, it is necessary to edit the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Add the following to the end of the file and replace the fields with the correct WiFi network name and password.

network={
    ssid="networkname"
    psk="networkpassword"
}

Then reboot the system (sudo reboot), and if all the information was correct, a WiFi connection should now be established. You could check that using ifconfig looking for the wlan0 device.

You can test the WiFi connection by pinging this blog!

ping -c 3 mendes-davi.github.io

Now that WiFi is working, it’s time to hide the plain text password in wpa_supplicant.conf.

Run the following command replacing the networkname and networkpassword again with the correct WiFi name and password.

wpa_passphrase "networkname" "networkpassword"

The output will yield an encrypted psk field which can replace the plain text psk field in the wpa_supplicant.conf file. Also, remove the commented line containing the plain text password.

VIM TIP: This editing can be done very easily inside vim using the read command. Inside vi, simply:

:read !wpa_passphrase "networkname" "networkpassword"

The output of the command will be inserted into the current vim buffer. This allows you to easily replace the previous file content.

Apt Sources

Apt downloads packages from one or more software repositories (sources) and installs them onto your RPi. A repository is generally a network server. The main Apt sources configuration file is at /etc/apt/sources.list. You can edit this files (as root) to download source packages by adding the line containing deb-src in the sources.list file.

❯ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi
# Uncomment line below then 'apt-get update' to enable 'apt-get source'
deb-src http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi

Finally, update your system by running:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Bluetooth devices

The Raspbian Buster image comes with the bluez and bluez-utils packages, providing the bluetoothctl utility. Pairing a device from the shell is very simple and can be easily automated. For that matter, the Arch Linux Wiki provides a good article with instructions: Bluetooth

You might want to add your user to the bluetooth group to avoid problems. Replace username with you user name and use the following command:

sudo usermod -a -G bluetooth username

Later on this tutorial, a new user will be created to replace the default pi account. Additionally, The How to Geek Blog provides a very nice introduction to groups in a linux environment.

Part 4: Enable SSH Logins

Working outside the RPi via SSH is a must have. I do this so i can log into my Raspberry Pi from the Terminal of my main production machine.

Run the sudo raspi-config command, and select Interfacing Options > SSH to enable SSH.

Alternatively, use systemctl to start the service

sudo systemctl enable ssh
sudo systemctl start ssh

You should change the private host ID keys. Otherwise, they have the same default values. Run the following commando to remove the default keys and generate new keys:

sudo rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_* && sudo dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server

TIPS

  • Passwordless SSH access
  • SSHFS (SSH Filesystem): SSHFS allows you to mount a Raspberry Pi’s files over an SSH session. This allows you to use your computer’s tools (file manager, text editor, image processing tools, and so on) to edit files directly on the Pi.

Part 5: Create a new user

Raspbian comes with the default pi user and the password this user is raspberry. You should first create a new user account and then remove the default pi account. It’s also necessary to add the new user to previous pi user groups to access the gpio, i2c, video and so on.

First, check the groups that the pi user is on by running:

groups pi
# The output is something like:
# pi : pi adm dialout cdrom sudo audio video plugdev games users input netdev spi i2c gpio

To create a new user, run the following command replacing username with the desired user name of choice. The -G argument adds the users to the groups in a comma separated list.

sudo useradd -m username -G sudo,adm,dialout,cdrom,audio,video,plugdev,games,users,input,netdev,spi,i2c,gpio
# Create a password for the new user
sudo passwd username

Log out and log into the new user account. Now it’s time to remove the pi account. You can do so by:

sudo deluser -remove-home pi

Also, remove the /etc/sudoers.d/010_pi-nopasswd file. This file allows the default pi account to use the sudo command without entering password. Since the pi account has been removed, the file is no longer necessary.

sudo rm /etc/sudoers.d/010_pi-nopasswd

Part 6: Installing a Desktop Environment (LXDE)

This part focuses on installing GUI on top of Raspbian Lite. For this we need: Display Server; Desktop Environment and a Window Manager. I will not cover the installation of a Login Manager because it’s very convenient for me to boot into the command line and start the graphical server.

First, install the Display Server using the following command:

sudo apt install xinit xserver-xorg

To install the Desktop Environment we need the lxde-core package and the lxappearance to change the look of applications. There will be a lot of dependent packages to install.

sudo apt-get install lxde-core lxappearance

Alternatively, if you want a more cohesive experience with all the pre-installed software of LXDE, just use:

sudo apt-get install lxde

For LXDE, the Openbox Window Manager is already installed in the lxde-core package. When you log in the tty, you cant start the X server using xinit /usr/bin/openbox-lxde. It’s easier to create a .xinitrc in the home directory to start the X server automatically after the tty login.

In the ~/.xinitrc file add the following lines to use the openbox-lxde as you default X session.

#!/bin/sh
exec openbox-lxde

Now, we automate the process of starting the X server after the tty login using the ~/.profile file. First, copy the default profile file:

cp /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

Then, append the following commands:

if [[ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]]; then
    pgrep openbox || startx
fi

Part 7: Make it your own

This turned out to be a longer tutorial than what i had in mind at first. If you have followed to the end, you should have a minimal LXDE install with Raspbian. From now on, you can tweak it to your preferences and install you preferred software.

As for me, I’m going to create a backup of the SD card. Bye!