After the Debian Wheezy armel image I made a new one based on Raspbian armhf. This one is compiled with hard float support, so basically floating point operations are MUCH faster because they are done in hardware instead of software emulation
Features include:
- A minimal Raspbian Wheezy installation (similar to a netinstall)
- Hard Float binaries: floating point operations are done in hardware instead of software emulation, that means higher performances
- Disabled incremental updates, means apt-get update is much faster
- Workaround for a kernel bug which hangs the Raspberry Pi under heavy network/disk loads
- 3.6.11+ hardfp kernel with latest raspberry pi patches
- Latest version of the firmwares
- Fits 1GB SD cards
- A very tiny 118MB image: even with a 2GB SD there is a lot of free space
- ssh starts by default
- The clock is automatically updated using ntp
- IPv6 support
- Just 14MB of ram usage after the boot
Here is the link to download my custom image:
http://files2.linuxsystems.it/raspbian_wheezy_20140726.img.7z โ London, UK
Checksum MD5: 1be9af7fcec38c7238229edf1c5cdb3c
Mirrors:
7zip: md5sum(1be9af7fcec38c7238229edf1c5cdb3c) โ File size: 144MB
http://mirrors.node1.hadrill.org.uk/darkbasic/raspbian_wheezy_20140726.img.7z โ Amsterdam, Netherlands (1)
https://debianer.puppis.uberspace.de/files/RaspberryPi/raspbian_wheezy_hardfp_20140726.img.7z โ Frankfurt, Germany
You will have to extract the image with p7zip:
7za x raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z
Then flash it to your SD with dd:
dd bs=1M if=raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img of=/dev/sdX
Finally, if you have an sd larger than 1GB, grow the partition with gparted (first move the swap partition at the end).
The root password is raspberry.
You will have to reconfigure your timezone after the first boot:
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
The keyboard layout:
dpkg-reconfigure console-data
And the localization:
dpkg-reconfigure locales
It’s done, I hope you will enjoy it.
Hey darkbasic,
any updates about a new version?
Regards!
Hi,
Unfortunately I still didn’t receive the Corsair GT Turbo I preordered a few weeks ago, anyway the new version is on the horizon now
Hi darkbasic,
Do you plan to release a new version this month?
Hopefully, but I still didn’t receive the GT Turbo so still no dev box.
Hi, do you have any how-to to customize image?
Thanks!
No, I’m sorry.
tried the image but it will not boot
what could be wrong?
You probably have the 512MB version so you need to update the firmware.
yep i have….
but how can i update if i cant boot?
new to raspi still
Just update the files in the sdcard ๐
might sound stupid…. but how do i do that?
Hi, I am interested at the same argument.. How could we update the firmware? Thanks
and why i ask is that i’m new to raspi and ave always just just used the “official” images from raspi found.
but i found it a bit slow and also there is a lot in there i dont need
so i came accross this image and a lot seems to like it
i’m not afraid of doing commands i just need to know which ones
i do have an card reader so i can update while running….. the big Q is just how?
thought i would tell how i’m running right now… the official image on a sd card in the pi itself… and this minimal image in a sd card reader…
do i just need to copy these 3 files from the rasperian image?
bootcode.bin
fixup.dat————might be mistaken about this one
start.elf
To update the firmware you need to copy *start.elf, bootcode.bin and loader.bin.
somethings wrong with usb i think…
http://t.co/z5WnIiQFkk
Hi
Can I install XBMC and Transmission torrent client to this minimal OS?
Thanks for the image!
“To update the firmware you need to copy *start.elf, bootcode.bin and loader.bin.”
Yes, without this upgrades it won’t here boot.
How I did it:
Went here:
github.com/raspberrypi/firmware
Entered in boot directory, found there “start.elf” and “bootcode.bin” files.
Downloaded them and copied over the older files that were in the image on the SD-card (in the smaller partition IIRC).
Didn’t find “loader.bin” there so I assumed there’s no need for updating.
After all this now R-Pi boots.
Expect, may be, some questions from my side ๐
Thanks to *jors* for the tips on rpi-update and raspi-config!
This
wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update -O /usr/bin/rpi-update
didn’t work here, complains about not trusted key and unknown issuer.
But after I installed Synaptic it got the package without complains.
Evidently some of the packages that come with Synaptic helped.
Aha Vortex…
Read the FAQs first!;-)
The page of the rpi-update developer:
https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update
darkbasic: Could you tell me where can I find the tools you used for the image? Actually, I need a newer minimal image, in the following days. Thanks.
Which tools? I didn’t use anything special except from qemu (www.qemu.org).
Do you have details of the changes made or links to references?
Looking for comments on USB audio devices used, actually used, successfully with this build, especially with arecord, darkice, etc..
Not looking for URL’s to lists of “alleged” supported devices… Looking for users who have tested and can confirm device(s) work.
Like this and the 1000’s of similar from aliexpress, ebay, etc…
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-Mic-Speaker-5-1-Audio-Sound-Card-Adapter-for-PC-/231008395350?pt=US_Sound_Card_External&hash=item35c92c6056
If you used this or other USB audio devices succesfully, please post device, and a link to the source.
Thanks!
About what proposed *jors* on getting rpi-update (on the second page here):
===============
wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update -O /usr/bin/rpi-update
chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-update
apt-get install git
rpi-update
==============
It didn’t work on my freshly booted R-Pi because of complains of untrusted key.
But if I run
apt-get install git
BEFORE the other commands all is OK.
Good news, I finally set up the Gentoo dev box on the i7-3770K and I’m updating the image right now
http://files.linuxsystems.it/files/compiling_raspbian.jpeg
Please be patient, I’m quite busy and it may take a few days.
Done, the new image is finally online ๐
Thank you!
Is there a way to simply upgrade to this new version? I mean, without using dd?
You can use apt to upgrade you current image and then copy the firmwares, the userspace drivers and the kernel modules from the new image.
Nice! Thanks.
This will work out of the box with the 512MB Raspberry Pi right?
It should, but I didn’t test because I don’t have a 521MB pi. Please let me know ๐
That kind of thinking shows you’re on top of your game
I can now confirm that it works perfectly out of the box with the 512MB version!
thanks for the image, finally a minimal distro for Raspberry.
I’m trying to run the JavaFX demos and they fail with the following error:
Did not find libGLESv2.so libGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
libGLESv2.so exists in /opt/vc/lib but there seem to be some missing dependencies:
tux@raspberry-pi:~/test$ ldd /opt/vc/lib/libGLESv2.so
libEGL.so => not found
libvcos.so => not found
libbcm_host.so => not found
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6f45000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libdl.so.2 (0xb6f3a000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/librt.so.1 (0xb6f2a000)
libvchiq_arm.so => not found
libm.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libm.so.6 (0xb6eb9000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6 (0xb6d8a000)
/lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 (0xb6f88000)
Could any of you guys tell me which packages I’m missing? Thanks!
Please try:
echo /opt/vc/lib > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/vc.conf
ldconfig
reboot
Let me know, I will release a new image if it works.
Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?
Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?
Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?
Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?
@darkbasic
Thanks a bunch it works. No more issues and the demos start.
One thing though: I’m missing a mouse cursor. Is there anything else that needs to be installed in order to have mouse support? Thanks.
—
Much obliged, you made my day!
Cheers,
Adrian
Glad to hear that
Regarding the mouse issue: are you running it as root? Are you running it from X11 or the console?
Dumb question: maybe you meant the mouse cursor in the console instead of in the demos? If yes try apt-get install gpm
@Darkbasic
Regarding the mouse issue: are you running it as root? Are you running it from X11 or the console?
I am running as root. JavaFX runs without X, it controls the frame buffer directly. When I ran the demos from the standard Raspbian Wheezy the mouse cursor worked.
Dumb question: maybe you meant the mouse cursor in the console instead of in the demos? If yes try apt-get install gpm
I meant in the demos, sorry for not being specific.
I will try installing gpm.
Hey, this image does not work for me.
It boots fine until:
[ 6.951268] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[ 13.533878] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 13.806080] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
after that nothing happens. Any Ideas?
I Already tried to update the firmware but it did not help.
I don’t use the ethernet port, the pi is connected to my pc via a serial to usb cable.
(I usually use a wlan stick but without booting I can’t configure it)
Ok, enough changes to make a new version: raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z
– New kernel.
– New firmware.
– Fixed an issue when booting without network.
– Fixed an issue with vc libs.
– Added mouse input in console.
Great news!
Just a heads up: mouse workes inside the demos after installing gpm.
Cheers!
The link at the top of the page still points to the previous version, just the name got updated!
Thanks, fixed.
Thanks, but trying to boot it without a network connection still does not work for me.
[ 7.955411] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p2): re-mounted. Opts: (null)
[ 15.359315] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 15.676185] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
I can’t connect it to the internet (to start it up once and configure it etc.) using an Ethernet cable since we are using a proxy here, which needs to be configured first.
I’m sorry but I can’t reproduce your issue: here it just works even without ethernet connection. Are you sure you are using raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img? I did insert a wrong link the first time.
Thank you for your fast reply.
I just downloaded the newest version -from the top of this page- (again) and I flashed it using win32diskimager on a 4GB SD Card. I removed all devices (wlan stick) except the Serial to USB Cable. And it still does not proceed any further. It seems to wait for eth0 to be ready?
The links inside this comment section are not linked for me. Do i need to have an Account to see them?
Are you sure it does work with ethernet connection? It seems you just didn’t configure inittab for the serial port…
Argh, Yes that was it! I didn’t think of that, because the default raspbian works via serial out of the box, thanks!
I was able to organize a Knoppix Live CD from the IT, then i could edit the inittab file as needed. Thanks!
You’re welcome. Next version will have ttyUSB0 in inittab by default.
Thanks for your work dark basic. Could you please generate kernel_cutdown.img image for your distro and make it available?
Thanks again.
I will for sure in next version, after all it is supposed to be minimal right? ๐
Hi,
Would it be possible to have “CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD” enabled in the kernel?
root@raspberry-pi:/# zgrep -i initrd /proc/config.gz
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD is not set
Thanks a lot.
Hi darkbasic,
first let me say thanks for your work. Thanks.
My aim is to run a Minecraft server, in 0-24h, headless on the Pi with the best possible performance. I only need Java RE to run the server and SSH to remotely log into the console. I already have these: my server is up and running fine headless, but on the official Raspbian image.
So I would like to ask you about your thoughts regarding to the hard-float performance: do you think that is possible to squeeze out a little much performance from the Pi using your minimal image compared to the original Raspbian image or it isn’t relevant to me?
Thanks,
matheus
Hi DarkBasic.
Thanks for the awesome work.
I have one question, how can I make the I2C bus work with your distro?
when I list the devices there seems to be no I2C bus.
Thanks.
Try the recovery kernel.
Which recovery kernel?
Look in the boot partition, it is a kernel with much more features and modules enabled in the config.
Thank you for making a minimal image! I’ve been using it on my Pi for the last few days. I have a request for the next image you make: Could you add wpa_supplicant by default in the image? I only have WiFi (WPA2) available, so I can’t connect via Ethernet. All the tutorials say to apt-get wpa_supplicant, which is a bit tough for me.
Ok, I will.
Thanks man! Nice image but i’m having issues trying to setup the wifi dongle i got with the pi. If i use current wheezy image, the dongle works but with yours the dhcp never allocates an IP address.
Is the any package to download to get it working?
I don’t remember: is wireless-tools installed in my image?
wireless-tools wasn’t installed and the adapter worked after setting it up. I’m wondering why the /etc/network/interfaces file fails to bring the interface up while this other method does not fail.
it was the wpasupplicant package causing the problem. You have to do “apt-get install wpasupplicant” and the edit the /etc/network/interface file and it works right away.
PS:No need to use wireless-tools after all
Very excited about your minimal image. Thanks for posting it!
It all pretty much just came right up. I want to use it as a headless remote backup server with a USB disk drive attached. When I plug in the USB drive nothing happens. I see no message in /var/log/messages. modprobe usb-ohci is not found. I see USB information in the messages file from when the system booted. Does this kernel support usb mass storage? Any hints how to get this working?
Yes, it should work.
Is it a pen drive or an hard drive? Becuase you will need a power supply for an external hard disk with the raspberry pi…
Great to see a minimal image for a headless RPI server, thank you very much. I have noticed, though that there is no support for USB in the image. Doing an “lsusb” returns a message stating that the command can’t be found. Going to do a bit more poking around to see what can be done to get this working. I am using an external USB HD to run the device from.
Thank You Again
apt-get install usbutils
For an external hard disk you will need a power supply with the raspberry pi.
Thanks very much for your replies!
I have installed usbutils. This made no difference. If I plug in a USB stick it come right up and I can access it perfectly. If I plug in a USB hard drive (not a pen drive) then do dmesg or check the log files I see no activity at all. It is as if nothing was attached. The external USB hard drive has its own power supply which for sure is attached. I have tried 2 different USB hard drives this way both with the same results. I verified the USB drives work on another Ubuntu box.
Please test your hard drive with an official raspberry pi image, I’m pretty sure it will not work either. Let me know.
Thanks! Will do this later tonight and get back with you.
That is very interesting, You are a very professional blogger.
I’ve joined your feed and look ahead to in the hunt for extra of
your great post. Also, I’ve shared your web site in my social networks
I’ve installed the ‘usbutils’ package and the external USB drive is now recognized. Also you might want to consider adding the ‘rpi-update’ package as well. You’ll also need to include the ‘binutils’ package. I don’t know if this is getting away from the minimal image that you wanted to create. Again, great work. Shoot me an email if you want any help with this project.
Thank You
I didn’t install usbutils or rpi-update because I want to keep it as minimal as possible.
I forgot to mention in the previous post that you can use ‘fdisk -l’ to see what drives are reconised.
jma
Yes! I am glad the install image is so small. It is easy for users to install usbutils or rpi-update if they need it. I as well normally use fdisk -l to see what drives can be mounted. When I attach my USB disk it does not show in the fdisk -l listing at all. I have not tried rpi-update yet. I can try that a little later today as well.
Solved!
After trying another install image with similar results as you guessed – I finally swapped out my usb cable – nope that isn’t it and then my power supply and whaddya know – that worked! I had grabbed a 5V supply from my junk box and the usb drive needed a 12V supply. Thanks so much for your time and comments.
Hey – using this image now to install rPlay so that I can do AirPlay mirroring from my Mac to my pi!
Just wondering if you wanted a couple of mirrors for your images?
Hi,
Mirrors are welcome of course. They aren’t mandatory anymore like in the first days when traffic touched 1TB in less than two months but it’s always good as backup.
Why 7zip? I hate having to install 7zip! Why not just a standard tar or zip?
Because I’m the one paying for the bandwidth
Hi, first, thank you for this images.
I am having the following issue: I’m trying to install wpasupplicant and get the following:
Failed to fetch http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/s/systemd/libsystemd-login0_44-11_armhf.deb 404 Not Found [IP: 5.153.225.206 80]
When I check the location, the package has the following name:
libsystemd-login0_44-11+deb7u4_armhf.deb
Please advise how to resolve this. Thank you
You have to run “apt-get update” before.
http://raspberrypi.mirrors.node1.hadrill.org.uk/darkbasic/raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z – Buffalo, NY
http://raspberrypi.mirrors.node2.hadrill.org.uk/darkbasic/raspbian_wheezy_20130923.img.7z – Atlanta, GA
Ping me an email as and when you release new updates and I’ll add them to the directory
Jack
Thanks
No worries!
@darkbasic…thanks, that worked. Much appreciated.
I trying now to get wireless setup. Please let us know when you’ll be able to have a new image out with wireless on by default.
Thanks
Any idea what packages/drivers are needed to this image to detect and enable the raspberry pi board camera?
Hi,
got it working on a pi ‘A type’, only some problems with wlan, my edimax ew-7811Un is not recognized (pretty standard stick). So, I wanted to install lsusb and iwconfig.
Strangely enough apt-get tells me these programs are unknown. ‘less’ installs fine though (talking about ‘minimal image’ ๐
Am I missing a repository or something?
How do I fix this?
You have to install usbutils and wireless-tools as said previously in the comments.
[…] looked at mainly two minimal images (thisย and this). I ended up using MINIBIAN as I struggled to get the camera working on the former. […]
Hi darkbasic, where I can download the source code?
apt-get source package-name
Sorry I refered to the source of the kernel image.
Sorry I refer to the source of the kernel image.
It should be apt-get source linux-image-rpi-rpfv ๐