Basic Configuration

All the network-related configurations are complete, so now you can go ahead with some basic and essential configurations on the Raspberry Pi itself.

Start by logging in:

$ ssh [email protected]

$ ssh [email protected]

$ ssh [email protected]

Raspbian comes with a configuration utility called “raspbi-config”.

This utility allows you to easily turn on or off components like the SPI and I2C interfaces, set how much RAM to dedicate to video, and even to turn on overclocking so that your Raspberry Pi can operate faster (I do not recommend doing this).

Start raspi-config like this:

$ sudo raspi-config

You will see the utility home page, from where you can access the subcategories:

You can navigate the utility pages with the arrow keys (up, down) and the TAB (change to next button) and Return (accept selection) keys.

These are the changes that you want to make (remember that some options, such as SSH and the hostname, are already enabled):

• Under Interfacing Options:
  • SPI: Enable
    
• Under Advanced Options:
  • Expand Filesystem: this will ensure that you are using the full available space on the SD card.
    
  • Memory Split: Make this 8MB (perhaps 0MB is possible, however I prefer allow some memory to the GPU to avoid potential instability).
    

Select “Finish” and allow your Raspberry Pi to reboot.

Give it a couple of minutes to reboot, and try to login again to ensure we can continue:

Great, we are almost done with the operating system setup. In the next lesson, I’ll show you how to setup the root user. 

By default, the root user is disabled, but we need to use it with our SFTP client later in the project.