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Installation

Calin Crisan edited this page Jan 19, 2020 · 22 revisions

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Requirements

You'll definitely need:

  • a Raspberry Pi board (all models are supported, but generations 3 and 4 are recommended)
  • a micro SD card (the minimum required capacity is 2GB)
  • a power supply unit capable of delivering enough current for your Pi and connected peripherals
  • a laptop or desktop machine equipped with an SD card reader (running the OS of your preference)
  • a properly configured local network

You may also need:

  • a case for your Pi
  • WiFi and/or Bluetooth USB adapters, if your Pi board does not come with WiFi/Bluetooth on-board adapter
  • an Ethernet cable, if you plan to connect the Pi to your wired network
  • an HDMI monitor and a keyboard, in case you must do some troubleshooting in the absence of a network connection
  • various peripherals, such as sensors and GPIO expansion boards, that you may wish to use

SD Card Preparation

Download OS Image

All versions and variants of the OS images are available for download on the Releases page.

Choose the Latest release, unless you know what you're doing. At the end of the release notes, you'll find download links corresponding to all Raspberry Pi generations, of the following format:

qtoggleos-raspberrypi<generation>-<version>.img.xz

The missing generation refers to the first generation. It is important to choose the correct image for your board, otherwise it won't boot. The following table indicates model - generation correspondence:

Model Generation
Raspberry Pi Model A Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Model B Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Model A+ Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Model B+ Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Compute Module Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Zero Generation 1
Raspberry Pi Zero W Generation 1
Raspberry Pi 2 B Generation 2
Raspberry Pi 3 B Generation 3
Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Generation 3
Raspberry Pi 3 A Generation 3
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 Generation 3
Raspberry Pi 4 Generation 4

Writing Image From Windows

If you're running Windows on your laptop, follow these instructions to write the image, but make sure to extract the compressed image file first.

Writing Image From Linux or macOS

If you use Linux or macOS, there's a writeimage.sh script that will do everything for you, including the optional setup of a wireless network connection and setting a static IP address.

First, download the script on your laptop:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qtoggle/qtoggleos/master/writeimage.sh -o writeimage.sh

Then run the script as follows (replacing the arguments with appropriate values):

$ sudo ./writeimage.sh -d /dev/mmcblk0 -i /path/to/qtoggleos-raspberrypi<gen>-<version>.img.xz

note 1: specify the device path to the disk and not to some partition (e.g. /dev/mmcblk0 instead of /dev/mmcblk0p1)

note 2: the writeimage.sh script will decompress the downloaded OS image for you

You can preconfigure a wireless network connection, when using the writeimage.sh script:

$ sudo ./writeimage.sh -d /dev/mmcblk0 -i /path/to/qtoggleos-raspberrypi<gen>-<version>.img.xz -n 'yournet:yourkey'

If you prefer a static IP instead of DHCP, just run the script as follows (replacing the values with your own):

$ sudo ./writeimage.sh -d /dev/mmcblk0 -i /path/to/qtoggleos-raspberrypi<gen>-<version>.img.xz -s '192.168.1.101/24:192.168.1.1:8.8.8.8'

In fact, any other image writing method should work, including using the Unix dd command. You can even use Etcher which is available for Linux and macOS, if you prefer a friendly user interface.

Initial Boot

Troubleshooting

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