Installing Raspbian from scratch onto a RPi3 Model B

[user2684]

[This post has been migrated from the old forum, it was originally sent by 4862resu on 2019-09-29 14:42:46]

Hi there,

If you are that kind of technologist playing around with technology all the time, you'll end up having a messy Raspberry Pi setup, and you better start from scratch if you want to avoid many headaches.

If you don't know how to do so, no worries, there are a lot of resources out there to help you on such accomplishment. However, you could get lost easily and some doubts might arise along the way.

In order to make your life easier, I've collected the steps you have to perform (at least, those are the ones I followed), written them down and made a video of how to install the latest version of Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B:

1. Download the latest Raspbian image from the web site. I’m going to use the Lite version, which is a minimal image more than enough for “eGeoffrey to live in”. At the time of writing (September 2019), I’m using Raspbian Buster Lite.

2. Installing the image in the SD card by following the “Installing operating system images on Linux” guide available at the Raspberry official website. For this step, I used a USB microSD reader like the one in these pictures:

3. Headless setup to avoid plugging any keyboard nor mouse. This can be accomplished by the "Setting up a Raspberry Pi headless" guide from the official Raspberry Pi's website. The following are the contents of the wpa_supplicant.conf file I use in the video but with my current WiFi setup:

country=ESupdate_config=1 ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicantnetwork={ ssid="<Name of your WiFi>" psk="<Password for your WiFi>"}

By finishing this guide, egeoffrey's accommodation will have WiFi connectivity and a secure access (SSH).
4. Access egeoffrey's accommodation and change the locker (default password to the pi user) to prevent others getting into it. The "SSH (Secure Shell)" guide from the official website tells you how to do it.

And, finally, a +15 min video to see all in action:

Installing Raspbian from scratch

Raúl