Back to the introduction

I have started installing a few utilities in view of preparing an email server on Pi, and figured out a few useful things

1. meld is a graphical diff file for Debian/Gnome. I am planning to use it to compare my working postfix configuration files with the new ones I will be setting up.
2. Instead of using tightvncserver to run a graphical application on Pi, it is easier to connect with a secure shell (ssh) with the -X option (ssh -X). In this way every time I call a gui application from a command line (e.g. gedit or meld), the system will use the graphical X system of the calling client (my desktop) to display a window acting on Pi. This is very helpful when I want to run a graphical editor on the Pi card, without the need of VNC or direct connection (mouse + keyboard) to the card
3. Debian run-levels can be viewed and edited with chkconfig command. The package chkconfig need to be installed (apt-get).
4. A good system log monitor is gnome-system-log, which can be installed with apt-get

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Posted by Gualtiero Chiaia on 14 January 2013 22:36:00 GMT #

Back to the introduction

Here are a few tips for the initial configuration of the system:

1. Expand the usable space on the card: assuming you have not done it on the very first boot-up of the system. First check the available disk space by df -h. On my installation the root file system had a total of 1.8G, 1.5G of which were already in use. Not much room to manouver. The solution is to expand the root file system to all the space available on the 4GB card. This can be done at any time by running the raspberry configuration script from a terminal window: raspi-config. From the main menu select expand-rootfs. Now reboot your raspberry and after this operation I have 3.6G (2G free) on my system
2. Remote desktop into your Pi. In my very first booting of the system, I connected my keyboard and mouse directly to Pi, and used the secondary input of my LG screen: in this initial configuration the Pi system was a world on its own. In my second step post, I connected the card through the ethernet port and used a terminal connection (ssh user@raspberrypi) into my pi from my desktop computer. In this step I will illustrate how to set up a remote desktop connection (gui) into pi. A good article detailing some of these steps can also be found here.
   1. Install vnc server on Pi with

      sudo apt-get tightvncserver install

      However, when starting the script tightvncserver, it failed with a missing font error. So I solved the problem by:
   2. remove and reinstall xorg by

      sudo apt-get remove xorg
      sudo apt-get install xorg
      

   3. This time thightvncserver worked fine and returned the session id for the seession to use when connect remotely. On the first run of the script, I also needed to set up a password for this remote connection. This password is needed by the svn client connecting to the server.
   4. I installed a vnc client on my desktop (xfvnc) and connected to Pi usining the sugegsted session id.
   5. I all works fine, but I suggest to avoid a full window session, because it is difficult to find the key combination to kill that window when finished

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Posted by Gualtiero Chiaia on 10 January 2013 08:15:00 GMT #

Back to the introduction

Tonight I have turned my Pi on.

This is my setting

1. keyboard/mouse adapter splitter from PS/2 to USB
2. HDMI to DVI video adpter to plug in digital input of my LG monitor
3. HDMI cable
4. 4GB card installed with Wheezy raspbian
5. Ethernet card to modem/router/gateway

All working fine, even if I had to reinstall the linux system on the card. I have changed the default user pi to one of my choice.

Tested the internet connection (web browser): working fine

Tested ssh remote connection from my main desktop over the LAN: working fine

I am very pleased

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Posted by Gualtiero Chiaia on 09 January 2013 23:30:00 GMT #